Justin Long’s 101-Minute A24 Body Horror Is Now Streaming on HBO Max

A24 has built a reputation for releasing specific and bizarre films that only they can get away with. Tusk is perhaps the purest example of that category.

Written and directed by Kevin Smith and based on a story from his SModcast podcast, Tusk is a body horror black comedy about an arrogant podcaster who travels to Canada for an interview and meets an eccentric, retired sailor with dark plans and an obsession with a walrus named Mr. Tusk.

Now, 12 years after its Toronto International Film Festival and theatrical run, the movie has found a new streaming home. The film arrived on HBO Max on Aug. 1, giving the cult film an opportunity to find new audiences where it could have been lost in the ether. For the dedicated slice of the internet that has kept Tusk alive in the decade since its release, this is long-overdue recognition.

Tusk Is Not For Everyone

Justin Long is Wallace Bryton, the podcaster who flies to Canada to interview a viral internet figure known as the Kill Bill Kid, only for the interview to fall through. He then gets a letter from a retired sailor named Howard Howe (Michael Parks) who promises extraordinary stories in exchange for company.

Wallace ends up being surgically altered into a human-walrus, with human skin and tusks made from his severed legs. The result is a grotesque and completely unprecedented A24 story that needs a viewer with a strong stomach and appreciation for the weird.

Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Lily-Rose Depp, and Johnny Depp round out the cast of Tusk, with Depp appearing in a heavily disguised supporting role that became one of the most talked-about cameos in cinema that year. Made on a budget of $3 million, the movie grossed just $1.9 million at the worldwide box office, making it a commercial disappointment. The body horror didn’t impress critics and audiences, as it holds a “rotten” 45% score from the former and 36% from the latter on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, it did find its dedicated fanbase slowly and stubbornly, as cult favorites always do, on streaming and word of mouth.

Tusk’s Cult Keeps On Growing

A closeup of Justin Long's Wallace after his walrus transformation in Tusk. — A closeup of Justin Long’s Wallace after his walrus transformation in Tusk.

Tusk is the first entry in Smith’s planned True North trilogy, followed by Yoga Hosers in 2016, with the third film Moose Jaws still in development. Smith conceived the entire premise during a podcast episode in which he and his co-host speculated about a fictional classified ad offering lodging in exchange for dressing as a walrus. Then, he simply made it.

Tusk plays more as an oddball, absurd, and twisted midnight movie that plays more like a demented fever dream than a horror or a comedy film. Its defenders have praised it as a darkly comic meditation on obsession and transformation that rewards the right kind of audience, and HBO Max’s acquisition gives it the platform it deserved from the beginning.

Tusk will be available to stream on HBO Max.