A sex worker is suspected of a series of murders in the dark comedy Anything That Moves, written and directed by Alex Phillips, presented as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Liam is a bike courier with special deliveries. He is both a provider of snacks and orgasms. His girlfriend is also a sex worker. Together, they have a great dynamic; it’s fun watching their interactions with one another and their various partners. Too bad their work is interrupted when clients start turning up dead in grisly murder scenes. Clues point to their circle of influence, putting the cops on their butts in the investigation, and sexually. Alex Phillips, writing and directing, creates a darkly comic thriller in the lo-fi 70s-tinged Anything That Moves.
Anything That Moves is set in a world like that of freewheeling 70s pornography. Sex happens for deliveries, from conversations with a hint, just because. Retro but modern with a smartphone app used to schedule, like everything else in our lives. Yes, often with payment, but we have a transnational economy these days, as made light of in the film. “I’ll put sandwiches in the reason, but we’ll both know what it’s really for.” “These sandwiches must be very good for four hundred dollars,” Liam and porn actress Ginger Lynn in a cameo joke. 
I loved the sex positive nature. As the title indicates, any of the sex workers will gleefully and willingly do their job with anything that moves. There is no contention over sex work and who the work is done on and by whom, straight, gay, sex, banging, and getting banged by the dad of the two daughters, already been seen, cops investigating the murders. It’s a free world.
That’s all fine and dandy, except too bad there is a murderer on the loose. The juxtaposition of the worlds of two very different types of bodily fluids (often from the same people) builds a weird, wild film. As a sequence opens, who knows if the splitting open will be metaphorical or literal? It’s fun watching the two worlds circle one another, bouncing ideas, fights, and jabs as the mystery continues. The writing is funny, with a perfectly fitting crudity, setting the characters well. All are played with a knowing wink of old porn and just cheesy films, best is Hal Baum as Liam.
Phillips shoots the film on 16mm. This both hits the loving recreations of earlier pornography and the other films lining 42nd Street in the 70s, the rough and tumble murder pieces. The grain and color use highlights the flesh and the blood, digging into the depths of the screen. The look does a lot of heavy lifting of the atmosphere and tone. I was reminded of fellow festival flick Fucktoy’s also shot on 16mm landscape. Both films are filled with a decaying depravity, worlds of pure abandon of lust and desire; dirty, grimy, lived in. Goopy.
Anything That Moves is a crude joy of depravity. A throwback celebration of the collision of sex and violence, I dug the gleeful menace. Anything That Moves is presented through the Fantasia Film Festival, running July 16 through August 3rd, 2025.