What if your afterlife took place in a PS2 cutscene? What if your house turned into a portal to a trans-dimensional realm run on Windows 11? Welcome to the world of Philip J. Cook, where big ideas meet barely-contained digital chaos—and it rips.
For over three decades, Philip J. Cook has been quietly building a parallel cinematic universe from his basement—one where cosmic battles, haunted landscapes, and low-poly monsters live side by side, held together by sheer imagination and a lot of green screen. Working far outside the studio system, Cook’s films embrace the uncanny charm of digital DIY, blending sci-fi, horror, and fantasy into a homespun genre stew that’s as earnest as it is otherworldly. Whether he’s conjuring purgatories or witches, his work pulses with the energy of someone who just really wants to show you something cool—even if he has to render it himself, one frame at a time. Shot on shoestrings and pure conviction, Cook’s films are scrappy, overambitious, and totally unhinged in the best way—proof that you don’t need a Hollywood budget to break reality wide open.
DESPISER
Dir. Philip J. Cook, 2001
United States. 104 minutes
In English
THURSDAY OCTOBER 2ND – 7:30PM
TUESDAY OCTOBER 7TH – 10PM
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15TH -7:30PM W/Q+A
FRIDAY OCTOBER 24TH – 10PM
In purgatory, there is no salvation. But there are a lot of flipped CG cars. The king of home-spun CGI, Philip J. Cook blessed the world with DESPISER in 2003 , a feature film filled with earnestness, polygons and gunslinging chase scenes. A political advertisement maker by day, Philip Cook found a creative outlet in the world of SFX, bringing to life the big budget sci-fi scripts he had written in the 80s. Phil worked on Don Dohler’s NIGHTBEAST in the 80s, making miniatures and filming SFX shots in his living room. Inspired by Dohler as well as Gerry Anderson (SPACE:1999), Phil set to work making his own films.
Described by Cook as “the story of an artist who travels to purgatory to rescue his wife from despotic forces,” DESPISER is a time capsule of the creativity in an age where at-home access to digital graphics programs was still new. Filmed in 1998 but released in 2003, DESPISER surfed the early wave of capturing performances on blue and green screen to be inserted in totally digital worlds before films like SPY KIDS of SIN CITY popularized the look. This indie gem of pure creativity stands as a testament to what one man can do with a computer and a lot of time.
PUNGO: A WITCH’S TALE
Dir. Philip J. Cook, 2020
United States. 102 minutes
In English
SATURDAY OCTOBER 4TH – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15TH – 10PM
When Dr. Grace Sherwood moves into an old house in Pungo, Virginia, the claws of the witch Grace Sherwood come alive to seek revenge for her drowning. Dr. Grace and the two contractors she hired to remodel the old house are thrust into the world of dark rituals, masked hunters and ghost tornados. Created 20 years after DESPISER, this film retains Philip J. Cook’s signature CGI immersion style, blending hand-crafted green screen worlds with on-location footage.
The real life “Witch of Pungo”, Grace Sherwood, was a local midwife and healer in the tidewater area of Virginia in the late 17th century. For years neighbors had blamed her for bad weather or crop yields, resulting in her trial as a witch. She was ordered to be bound by the hands and “ducked” in water to test her innocence (if she floated, witch) and was thus drowned in the Lynnhaven river in 1706. This imaginative retelling of injustice and revenge retains the unique creative style and B-movie charm of Phil’s earlier work and continues themes of religion, astrophysics and the nature of reality.
