It’s been a while.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched abject shit, and I can’t think of any company to pull me back on the horse quite like Purgatory Blues LLC. I didn’t want to watch any Hood Tubi movies because I legitimately enjoy those films. Occasionally someone reads my reviews and thinks I’m praising the films in a condescending, sarcastic way. I’m not. I’d watch pretty much anything with Jamal Woolard in it and Brandon Cornett is a cinematic genius. Trust Nobody is a great series.

Directed by Zachary Snygg, The Cigarette is a movie about cigarettes. The lead role is played by Tina Krause, a woman who answers the question of what Tommy Wiseau would be like as a woman with even less emotional range. Susan is kicked out of her boyfriend’s house because she’s a deadbeat who apparently eats a lot of junk food and leaves plates of snacks half-eaten that look like they were hastily assembled for a movie shoot. After failing to mooch off of her parents and her friends, all of whom hate her, she meets a dude at a bar who wants to give her a job.

A blowjob. Nah I’m just kidding. He gives Susan a pack of cigarettes as well as a fake cigarette and tells her to pretend to smoke in public areas because it will attract interested parties, and then just give a cigarette to people who ask. Like a marketing job but you’re marketing cigarettes to children. I get the feeling that Krause is exactly the same person in real life as she is in this movie. If you’re wondering if this is a character development film about a woman who atones for her sins, it’s not.

The Cigarette is a ripoff of Courage the Cowardly Dog, specifically the episode Hothead where Eustace is given an experimental tonic that purports to grow hair. Problem is the tonic causes him to become overly angry at the slightest provocation and that anger spirals into a destructive rage. The cigarettes drive people into 28 Days Later zombies who go around killing people.

Best part of the movie hands down are the extras, whose performances are just a chef’s kiss. These are people who were clearly asked if they want to film some shots for a movie, and all of them are just hamming it up knowing how ridiculous it all is. There’s a scene with two little girls who were instructed to hold the fake cigarette and look like they’re smoking and cool, and then they go on a murder spree. The kids are just having a lot of fun and you can see the adults in those scenes also barely holding back laughter.

The fact that these people who don’t even have IMDB pages, and many of them are under 10, highlights how after 163 movies Tina Krause has developed minimal charm as a person. I’m just saying, it’s pretty bad when you’re being upstaged by the acting chops of an 8 year old asking for a cigarette. I also love Stan, the tenant whose role in the film is to just be there and be acknowledged. Hi Stan.

At one point Tina says she feels like she’s in a Lifetime movie, and let’s not get a big head. Sarah Marable is one of the few actors with genuine acting charm, outside of Tom Cikoski. Cikoski is hilarious, he admonishes his daughter for hanging out in seedy places. How does he know the bar is bad business? It has a billiards table. Stan shows up in the middle of a tense scene to let them know they’re out of pickles. I love Stan. Hi Stan.

There’s a scene where they are clearly just gathering b-roll footage of unaware people walking down the street so Susan can pretend to ask them questions. This is the kind of film whose scenes St. James St. James would parody. I can’t tell if there’s supposed to be a supernatural element to the movie because when Susan gets caught the cigarettes in her case just disappear. And it seems utterly pointless because the news already showed the police were aware of the cigarettes existing and that Susan was distributing them. Was this movie sponsored by Uber? They have a lot of references to Uber being a reliable transportation company.

The Cigarette would be much better with about 80% less speaking scenes from Tina Krause and a handful more scenes of people just killing each other. The best parts of the film are when the director clearly just started rolling and told the actors “do something”, and the film needs more of those scenes. It doesn’t play into the schlock quite enough and I can’t express how grating Tina Krause is whenever she talks.

Rating: D-