Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
When his best friend and podcast co-host goes missing in the backwoods of Canada, a young guy joins forces with his friend's girlfriend to search for him.
Tusk is genuinely one-of-a-kind in its sheer absurdist premise — a man surgically transformed into a walrus by a deranged recluse — which earns it a well-above-average Novelty score simply for being utterly unlike anything else in existence. Kevin Smith commits fully to the bizarre concept and Michael Parks delivers a memorably unhinged performance as the villain. However, the plot is uneven and padded, with the search storyline dragging considerably and Johnny Depp's comedic detective subplot dividing audiences sharply. Cinematography is functional at best, lacking any distinctive visual language. The ending, while tonally bleak and weird, feels unsatisfying rather than resonant, leaving the film feeling more like a glorified thought experiment than a fully realized horror-comedy.