In no time at all, the drugs will start taking you in director Luke Momo’s science fiction horror movie Capsules. Back in 2018, chemistry majors Dev (Caroline Potter Shriver), Maya (Kate Pittard), and Ryan (Davis Browne) were up for days on black-market Adderall studying. They know the reclusive Jasper (Marcus Fahey) put together a badass study guide for the test they are cramming on. So Ryan lures Jasper out of solitude with promises of galactic weed and tacos.
On the way back to the apartment, they come across an old man (David Dotterer) lying on the road. They help him to his feet, but he is slobbering and totally out of it, even dropping his pill bottle. After seeing the horrible state the old man was in, Ryan keeps the pills to take later as they must be some really powerful s**t. The others are game and nudge a smoked-out Jasper into trying some. Everyone has a lollipop in their mouth and butter in their a*s for hours until Ryan starts foaming at the mouth. They discover that if they come down from the mystery medication, they will convulse and die. They sneak into a lab to study the compound in order to find an antidote. What they find only leads to more sinister and cosmic questions. Meanwhile, their stash is getting low.
The script to Capsules, written by Momo and actor Davis Browne, replicates the spirit of the classic Andy Prieboy song Send in the Drugs. Here we have a movie where people get bored and take drugs, just like folks have done since getting tired of the way the same old cave walls. For those working with limited means, drugs are the kind of scenario you can go far on with very little. However, the drug’s effects can be potently portrayed with acting, camera angles, and lighting like it is here. I loved the sequence shot by Harrison Kraft where the sensation of the pills is shown by the group lying on the ceiling. Momo also deploys ingenious uses for the film’s eerie green glowing titles.
“…if they come down from the mystery medication, they will convulse and die.”
There is a steady countdown of how many doses there are left before death. It brings to mind the great Bill Rebane’s low-cost masterpiece, The Alpha Incident, where a group of people infected by an alien organism has to stay awake, or their heads will explode. The tension is created from the narrative and doesn’t require a smidge of CGI. Instead, there are some incredible practical makeup effects by Ashley K. Thomas and Addison Thompson that look like they are from a much more expensive movie, another parallel with The Alpha Incident.
This movie features performances that will hit your nervous system like a strychnine buzzsaw. Shriver does the parade of medicated bravado that radiates druggie disdain of all boundaries. Browne is a much cooler doper character, but he has the advantage of writing his own dialogue. Browne either knows someone just like his character or maybe… no, he must know someone just like Ryan. His dialogue definitely walks the walk. Pittard is much more subdued, and it works like magic, as she is that I am responsible while stoned to the gills type. Fahey is amazing in his mastery of anti-social delivery. As good as his character is written, Fahey completely sells it gift-wrapped.
Like most great drug trips, the comedown on Capsules is a little uneasy. The ending is very similar to those found in M. Night Shyamalan films, which means it is smart but will piss a few off for some reason. There is this potentially cool post-credit scene set in 1968 with someone sporting a haircut from two decades later. However, Momo stayed up late in the lab and made a top-drawer indie skin crawler. Get ready to microdose on a micro-budget with Capsules.