Movie Spotlight: Psychotic State

An anti-bullying PSA opens the movie. Sincere, plainspoken, the kind of thing you would expect to see projected in a school gym. Then it detonates into slasher territory so fast the tone whiplashes. That collision, a genuine public-service message bolted onto a gonzo revenge picture, is the whole engine of “Psychotic State,” and it is there on purpose.

Derek Young wrote it, directed it, edited it, and stars as David Coleman, a man who spends the film narrating his own life to a psychiatrist, starting with a bullying incident at a park involving his grandfather’s knife. “I wanted people to argue about whether he was a good guy or a bad guy,” Young says. The movie keeps circling one question without ever settling it for you: is what David does justice, or just more of the cruelty that made him this way?

A story about bullying that got personal

Young says the film began as something closer to a thesis than a script. “It began as a story about bullying and the psychological impact it can have on someone over time,” he says. “I was interested in exploring how those experiences shape a person’s mindset and behavior, sometimes pushing them to a breaking point.” The idea grew past a single role he wanted to play. Taking on David Coleman himself, he says, let him “connect more deeply with the character and portray his internal struggles in a way that felt authentic.”

Therapy sessions instead of a timeline

Rather than laying David’s story out in order, the film routes almost all of it through sessions with a psychiatrist. Young wanted the audience piecing things together the way a therapist would. “You’re hearing it directly from him, how he remembers it, how he processes it, and sometimes even how he tries to justify it,” he says. Told straight, chronologically, he thinks the story would still work. It just would not get under the skin the same way. “The sessions make it more immersive and give the audience a chance to really understand, or question, who he is as a person.”

Shot on tape, and left that way

The look of “Psychotic State” is not an accident of budget, or not only that. Young cut the picture himself and pushed it toward a raw, grindhouse texture on purpose, filming on a Canon XL2, on tape. “The whole idea was that you’re experiencing David’s memories, so I wanted it to have that raw, grindhouse, found-footage type of quality,” he says. “You’re not just watching events happen, you’re stepping into someone’s memories and seeing things through his perspective. The imperfections are part of the experience.” The soundtrack pulls in the same direction. Original songs from Count Six String, including the theme “Kill or Be Killed,” were written to comment on what David is doing rather than just play underneath it, and Young wrote the theme’s lyrics himself before handing them to Wayne Goulden to record. Two tracks from the band Radioactive, “Monster” and “The Living Dead,” fill out the rest.

A house full of horror royalty

David eventually takes over a club called The Dollhouse, reshaping it around dancers named Innocence, Ecstasy, and Serenity, a setting Young says let him show a side of the character the home and school scenes could not. It is also where the film’s cameos cluster. Lloyd Kaufman, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, PJ Soles, Linnea Quigley, and David Naughton all turn up in character bits, alongside a long list of genre veterans including Camille Keaton, R.A. Mihailoff, Vic Armstrong, and Conrad Brooks. Young says most of it came from friendships and convention run-ins rather than a casting process, and once people showed up, he mostly let them go. “The majority of them I gave complete freedom,” he says. “Nothing they say is scripted. I basically let them run with it and just be themselves.” He is a self-described student of Lloyd Kaufman and Troma, Quentin Tarantino, and Alfred Hitchcock, three filmmakers with wildly different ideas about tone, and it shows in how casually the movie swings between grounded and unhinged.

A ward that became a whole world

The title has a stranger backstory than it looks like it should. Before this film, Young was developing a different project called “Josie” with the mentorship of David Hess, and back then, Psychotic State was just the name of the psych ward where Josie was locked up. After Hess passed away, Alex Vincent, who played Andy in “Child’s Play,” came on to rewrite that script, a project Young still intends to make. David Coleman, it turns out, is Josie’s brother, and when the chance came to make his story first, the ward’s name came with it. The film’s cold open, meanwhile, exists because of a happy accident: Young handed the opening disclaimer to Nurse Hatchet, also known as Mixtress Demonatrix, and let her write her own warning to the audience. The world has kept expanding since release. Novelist William Pattison, writing as Eric Morse, adapted the film into a book of the same name, and Young is now finishing a director’s cut that will run close to three hours once the PSAs, the opening short, and the full cameo material are folded back in.

What to know before you press play

Young does not want anyone mistaking the rough edges for a mistake. “This isn’t meant to be a perfectly polished Hollywood-style film, and that’s intentional,” he says. “You’re stepping into David’s mind, the way he remembers it, and it’s going to be a wild, gritty, and sometimes uncomfortable ride.” Go in expecting a mix of horror, dark comedy, and character study rather than a straight slasher, and know the film means its bullying material as much as it means its chaos. As Young puts it, the story only exists because of everyone who showed up for it. “Without everyone involved, this monster, which is really David’s mind brought to life, wouldn’t exist.”

Horror

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Streaming now on Relay.