The Theta Girl

I'm astonished by this film—I went through my teens as a weird kid in the '80s, and throughout my viewing of "The Theta Girl," absolutely every moment felt convincingly like an '80s cult film, and it kept me utterly transfixed. Its premise, an existential drugs-as-doorways action/horror revenge-thriller exploitation trip, is much more intelligent and novel than I expected on the basis of the trailer, and it's vastly better- crafted and more well-acted (even the supporting cast shone) than anyone has any right to expect from a film that cost less than Cleveland real estate. Big props to all involved on a hell of an accomplishment.

Of course I had never even heard about this 2017 movie from writer David Axe and director Christopher Bicket prior to stumbling upon the movie here in 2025. And with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to check out what it was.

Writer David Axe put together a very strange and bizarre storyline. I have to say that I was struggling a bit to fathom whether or not there was a coherent red thread throughout the course of the narrative, as it felt very random and disjointed. I was not particularly entertained by the storyline here, but then again, drugs isn't something that I am interested in.

One thing in the movie that made zero sense was the sentence "I can end this, just blink". Uhm, all people blink, so she basically left the guy no choice than to be executed.

My interest in the narrative was starting to wane and slip dramatically around halfway through the movie. I just couldn't find the core essence of the narrative.

The sheer amount of full frontal nudity that was in the movie served absolutely no purpose, and it just sort of dragged the movie down a notch. Had director Christopher Bicket opted to not include the full frontal nudity scenes throughout the movie, it would still have been the same end result movie, and it wouldn't have felt weighed down by pointless sleaze.

I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that was actually something that spoke in favor of the movie, as I enjoy watching unfamiliar talents on the screen. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

The effects in the movie were fair, and there were a couple of bloody and gory scenes.

This is not a movie that I will return to watch a second time.

My rating of director Christopher Bicket's 2017 movie "The Theta Girl" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

Well written, paced and acted, this low budget film is incredibly creative and beautiful. Victoria Elizabeth has the face of a silent film star. This thing needs to be distributed worldwide on all platforms possible. Christopher Bickel is brilliant in his debut as a director. I hope to see more from him in the near future.

I was asked by a friend to go see this and when originally give a gist of what to expect my initial feeling was "Oh criminey. Well at least it'll make for Rifftrax style bait."

After seeing it though I have to say I was very impressed with it. On a budget of about 14 grand, they produced a movie with an interesting and coherent plot, appropriate and well executed special effects, and overall a very well done Grindhouse style movie. I've seen movies 10,000 more expensive that were not fit to wipe the corn-syrup blood from this movie's boots.

If you love the grindhouse genre you will be pleased to find that you get that AND a fully well executed movie. Even if you do not like grindhouse you will still find a reasonably well executed revenge vengeance story.

So the only reason i am writing this is the 20something obvious fake reviews here. you can clearly see that these accounts were only created to comment on it and give it a skyrocket rating. this being said, i take away 1 star from originally 5. the movie itself, well. let's put the good stuff first: the soundtrack was amazing. there's a lot of trippy synth and spacy rock that really pulls the viewer in. the concert at the beginning was expendable but after that the music was almost perfectly chosen. all in all there are plenty of spaced-out scenes you wouldnt expect when reading a summary. there's some late but decent blood and gore that earns the movie another star. acting is alright although none of the characters is really that likeable.

now for what didnt appeal to me: the lenght. it would have really worked out as a 1-hour-and-some flick instead of the 97, sometimes tedious minutes next, the "Main villain", if you can call him that, was just plain bad. his reasons, his acting, his motivation.. it was too low a reason for a killing spree. and finally, the poster art promises stuff the movie can't keep. it is obvious that the artwork tries to associate with 70s grindhouse flicks like the one with the one-eyed girl which name i cannot recall at the moment. it has the revenge alright, but none of the psychological torment that this kind of movie usually is expected to offer. kill some time with your buddies if you got nothing better to do but it's not a "future cult movie" like some of the reviews - the fake ones - like to suggest