Two trespassing graffiti artists, two immortality-obsessed scientists, and one furious sea-god.

If you love absurdism and 80’s schlock horror as much as writer/director Jim Hickox does, then his new film Soft Matter should be right up your alley. Immortal sea creatures, mad scientists, street artist, an animated musical number about a pet turtle becoming a pet ghost are just a small amount of the insanity that can be found here. I didn’t even mention the seven-foot-tall Mr. Sacks, a collection of taped together black trash bags leaking some kind of brownish ooze, that likes to dance the night away to electronic music under red and blue lights.

Kish (Ruby Lee Dove II) is a young girl, with a drawn-on mustache, wants to know why Haircut (Devyn Placide), a young street artist doesn’t want more for himself. After a conversation about his pet ghost, she suggests doing a ghost themed art installation at a nearby abandoned hospital. She contacts her sophisticate friends, Randolph (Mark Blumberg) and Miss Teath (Catherine Grady), to come and check out Haircut’s work.

Unbeknownst to Kish and Haircut, the hospital is not as abandoned as they originally thought. Inside Drs. Kriegspiel (Mary Anzalone), Grist (Hal Schneider), and three to four more who are deceased or almost so, struggle to find the secret to immortality for mankind. Each day they feverishly work, experimenting of their various “patients” including a woman with giant lobster claws, the aforementioned Mr. Sacks, and a mound of organs, meat and a tentacle named Miss Treefish (who has a bit of a thing Dr. Grist). However, the sea-god, who granted immortality to the jellyfish, the lobster, and the octopi, comes out of a mop bucket, in the janitor’s closet, to stop them.

Right from the opening credits, with the VHS tracking lines across the bottom of the title screen, I was hooked. While Soft Matter does drag a moment or two here and there and probably could have a little more grossness, I still enjoyed it very much. I look forward to seeing more from this filmmaker.