The Wheel of Heaven

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

The Wheel of Heaven is a subversive feature film from Joe Badon, a writer-director with a penchant for the grotesque and bizarre. From narrative structure to key plot points, The Wheel of Heaven makes a point of disorienting viewers as much as it entertains them. Set up like a Matryoshka doll, this film comprises vignettes and miniature serials threaded together to keep that good old wheel turning. The result is a cabinet of curiosities, an intentional farcical of fun that will leave you breathless, confused and a little uncomfortable. Fans of Badon’s shorts such as Fck’n Nuts and The Blood of Dinosaurs will revel in familiar faces and the psychedelic imagery that’s become synonymous with Badon’s signature.

The plot of The Wheel of Heaven is cosmically convoluted and full of ephemeral characters who occasionally share the same face. Viewers will be delighted and horrified to reunite with Uncle Bobbo (Vincent Stalba) of The Blood of Dinosaurs infamy in the film’s prologue before meeting the film’s leading ladies: Purity, Marge the Mechanic, Margaret Corn/Captain Corn…all delightfully played by Kali Russell. The film centers around Marge Corn – a woman faced with dire circumstances and a series of choices that could result in as many as two hundred and fifty-seven interpretations of fate.

Marge is a woman of many talents. In her numerous manifestations she is an auto-mechanic, the captain of a spaceship, a devoted granddaughter and the good twin of a homicidal Santa Clause wannabe. Yes, you read all of that correctly – and you thought you were busy? Try being Marge. There are moments where The Wheel of Heaven feels like a tried-and-true slasher film within which Marge is the damsel turned probable final girl. There are other moments where it feels like “Mr. Rogers” Saturday morning special took a trip to the dark side, and therein lies the beauty of Joe Badon’s work.

The Wheel of Heaven throws a lot of seemingly random things at the wall…and many of them stick. The horrors, the surrealism, the high camp and self-awareness of The Wheel of Heaven make it delightful for viewers of the more speculative genres, though newbies to Badon’s work might experience a little bit of whiplash trying to follow the throughline through interstitial cuts, exploratory episodes and the choose your own adventure style of the film. But if they can hold on and accept that they’ll never find their footing in the world of The Wheel of Heaven, they’ll be able to surrender and go with the absurd flow of events.

This film is likely to get compared to the work of David Lynch, as many default to calling the strange and inexplicable “Lynchian.” But the truth is that film hasn’t seen Joe Badon’s brand of strange before – not even in the land of Lynch. The trick is to refrain from putting The Wheel of Heaven in a box. It cannot be contained. The story itself is busting at the seams with too much plot and too much possibility to be contained in a single universe or dimension. It is meant to be seen and heard and felt across space and time.