[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

On Saint Patrick’s Day, I watched Fatal Deviation—which proudly advertises itself as Ireland’s first feature-length martial arts epic—and it’s taken me a whole week to digest the experience. The movie’s plot is a contradiction wrapped in a paradox—childishly simple at first glance, yet needlessly convoluted upon further inspection. The story revolves around only six major characters, but their intricately interwoven motivations and interpersonal conflicts form a labyrinthine web of meaningless coincidences, redundancies, and non-sequiturs.

Words alone cannot adequately convey the infuriating complexity of this narrative puzzle; in order to properly dissect Fatal Deviation’s twisted, tangled, circular structure, I required a visual aid—a map of the filmmakers’ collective madness:

Now, to clarify that jumbled mess of lines and scribbles, allow me to summarize Fatal Deviation in its entirety:

Jimmy Bennett, an Irish martial artist traumatized by his partially repressed childhood memories of his father’s murder, returns to his hometown and starts dating Nicola, a beautiful grocery store clerk.

Mikey, the unhinged son of a tyrannical crime lord named Loughlan, wants to kill Jimmy for “stealing” Nicola away from him.

Loughlan, however, would rather employ Jimmy’s services as an enforcer—he’s the man that killed Jimmy’s father all those years ago, and the idea of bossing his victim’s son around is too deliciously ironic to pass up.

Jimmy turns down Loughlan’s job offer, effortlessly thrashes his thugs, and continues to go steady with Nicola.

One day, while frolicking through the forest with Nicola, Jimmy encounters the wise old monk (Franciscan, not Shaolin) that trained his father in the ways of martial arts.

The monk encourages Jimmy to compete in an annual martial arts tournament that is rigged in Loughlan’s favor; if Jimmy is able to defeat Loughlan’s hired combatant, then Loughlan’s power over the community will be shattered.

Enraged by this challenge to his reign, Loughlan orders Mikey to kidnap Nicola. The criminals issue an ultimatum: if Jimmy doesn’t throw the tournament, Nicola dies.

Naturally, Jimmy wins without much difficulty, then immediately rushes off to rescue Nicola—slaughtering Mikey and all of his henchmen in the process.

Jimmy treats Nicola to a celebratory picnic—where he is ambushed by Loughlan! Fortunately, the gangster is approximately ninety years old, allowing our hero to easily disarm him and gun him down while he’s sprawled helplessly on the ground.

And the survivors live happily ever after.

Hopefully, I don’t need to elaborate on that synopsis in any greater detail. It’s nearly impossible to logically analyze the precise… “qualities” that transform a “passion project” like Fatal Deviation (or Miami Connection, or The Room) into an unintentionally hilarious masterpiece of Trash Cinema.

Let’s be reasonable. Leave the green bagels and shamrock-shaped sunglasses alone and join us in celebrating the coming holiday in the traditional way: with a midnight screening of Ireland’s only feature-length martial arts film: FATAL DEVIATION.

This weekend only!

FRIDAY, MARCH 17 – MIDNIGHT FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – MIDNIGHT

If you ever feel like you don’t have the strength to go on, find inspiration in this clip from Ireland’s first-ever martial arts movie, Fatal Deviation.

Martial "arts"

Who said movements were supposed to flow like water? You've been watching too many movies. Drink every time you're treated to the stiffest stance sequence you've ever seen in your life. 

Black and white filming

I hesitate to call this rule the flashback rule because it's not entirely obvious that they didn't simply run out of money for colored film

Montage

What kind of fight movie would this be without a montage? No fight movie at all, I say, and this fight movie is the most fight to ever movie which is why we're treated to so many montages they eventually ran out of Primitive Radio God knock off tracks to treat us to and resorted to raw dogging us with no musical accompaniment

Wizard jumpscare - drink every time a martial artist wizard is on screen

Jean Can't Van Damme

Get it? Did you hear me? I said Jean Can't Van Damme. Cause he sucks

Anyway, drink whenever main character guy is eating off JCVD's plate

Weird zooms

Youtube autogenerated subtitles on for this one boys

Drink every time they just could not cipher these thick accents

Meanwhile in Sunnyvale…

Drink every time we cut to a late 90s trailer park and you're genuinely surprised to not see Ricky or Jullian stumbling around

House Rules that apply:

Drink when they drink