There’s a version of Mr. Reset and the Society of Turnbuckle & Bone that works best when it’s half-watched at a party, flickering on a TV somewhere in the background while people drift in and out of its orbit. Not because it’s disposable, but because it feels less like a traditional film and more like a chaotic art piece. It’s a 60-minute collage of wrestling mythology, experimental horror, and fragmented storytelling that often plays like a long, strange recruitment tape for a cult you’re not entirely sure you want to join.
At its core, the concept is undeniably compelling. A secret society manipulating the wrestling industry from the shadows, luring desperate indie talent with promises of fame, only to subject them to psychological trials and ritualized identity breakdowns. That idea alone should be a slam dunk for a stylized indie horror film. And sometimes it is. The film dips into something genuinely eerie when it leans into that conspiratorial dread, especially in its early prologue, which frames Turnbuckle & Bone as an Illuminati-like force pulling the strings behind the spectacle.
But this is a movie where the editing does almost all of the heavy lifting. The pacing, structure, and energy live and die in the cut. Rapid-fire montages, distorted voiceovers, bold on-screen text, and a barrage of visual ideas create something that feels like you’re trapped inside a wrestling titantron video for an hour. It’s kinetic, messy, and occasionally hypnotic. It’s also exhausting.
Director Jedi Koszewski clearly aims for something artsy, surreal, and psychologically dense. The problem is that different doesn’t always translate to effective. The film throws a lot at the wall: archival footage, pixel-art animations, random animated inserts, glitchy transitions, and tonal shifts that swing from dark comedy to horror to pseudo-documentary. Some of it lands. A lot of it feels like noise.
What does work, though, is the world-building at the character level. Mr. Reset himself is an interesting creation, a masked, almost priest-like figure obsessed with breaking down and rebuilding wrestlers into something mythic. There’s a strong idea there about control, identity, and performance. Vinny Pacifico’s Power Punch storyline, especially the angle involving his wife being used as collateral, taps into a surprisingly effective horror concept about ambition devouring personal life. It’s one of the few threads that feels grounded enough to latch onto emotionally.
There are smaller narrative threads sprinkled throughout that feel like mini-fables about wrestling psychology, including a struggling face forced into a heel role and Ryzin’s more chaotic embrace of manipulation and excess. These moments have flashes of insight into the mental toll of the business, even if the film doesn’t always give them enough breathing room to land fully.
And yes, for wrestling fans, there’s added value. Seeing familiar faces like Bobby Fish, who continues to bring that no-nonsense, workhorse presence, gives the film a layer of authenticity. The in-ring sequences, often shot in stark black and white, are legitimately engaging and remind you that beneath all the experimental chaos, these performers know exactly what they’re doing when the bell rings.
Visually, the film is undeniably unique, but that uniqueness becomes a double-edged sword. There’s so much happening on screen, so many competing styles and ideas, that it starts to feel more distracting than immersive. The inclusion of random animation sequences and video game-inspired elements like stat screens adds flavor, but they rarely feel integrated into a cohesive whole.
The same goes for the soundtrack. Generic rock cues pop up where something more atmospheric or ominous would have served the tone better. When the movie leans into unsettling sound design and tension-building noise, it works. When it defaults to stock-sounding music, it undercuts itself.
For all its flaws, though, there’s something admirable here. This is a film swinging hard. It wants to be a surreal fusion of horror, wrestling, and experimental storytelling, and it refuses to play it safe. Even when it doesn’t work, and it often doesn’t, it’s never boring in a traditional sense. It’s just confusing, overwhelming, and occasionally frustrating.
In the end, Mr. Reset and the Society of Turnbuckle & Bone feels like an experience more than a movie. A weird, uneven, sometimes fascinating experiment that probably would have been stronger as a shorter, tighter piece. Wrestling fans and those with a taste for offbeat horror will likely get the most out of it. Everyone else might find themselves admiring the ambition while wondering what exactly they just watched.
Jessie Hobson