Guillermo del Toro has thrown his public support behind I Love Boosters, the new film from Boots Riley, praising the director’s commitment to physical filmmaking at a moment when the industry’s relationship with digital effects has rarely been more scrutinised.
After Riley posted behind-the-scenes footage of a chase scene shot on a miniature set of the Bay Area, del Toro responded on X: “Not enough is said about how much Boots uses hand-made things instead of digital things!” Riley amplified the endorsement on his own feed, writing that he felt honoured by del Toro’s attention, and clarified that while the film uses VFX for compositing and cleanup work, there is no CGI in the production.
The practical techniques Riley deployed are inventive even by the standards of effects-heavy filmmaking. Oakland-based stop motion animators Mystery Meat Media created the figures in $100,000 suits that appear late in the film. For fashion mogul Christie Smith’s office — the lair of Demi Moore’s villain — Riley tilted the entire set 17 degrees to achieve the scene’s disorienting visual angle.
An electromagnetic beam was simulated using a water hose shot against a black background, then composited into the frame. The result is precisely the kind of analogue ingenuity that del Toro — whose own films rely heavily on creature suits, puppetry, and physical sets — has long championed as a counterweight to the VFX-pipeline approach that now dominates studio productions.
I Love Boosters, produced by Annapurna Pictures and Neon on a reported $20 million budget, premiered at SXSW in March before opening wide on May 22. It currently holds a 92% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers pointing to its anarchic skewering of the fashion industry and Keke Palmer’s performance as the film’s twin strengths.
It opened to an estimated $3.72 million from 1,750 locations in its first weekend. The gap between critical enthusiasm and ticket sales echoes the trajectory of Riley’s debut feature Sorry to Bother You, which built its reputation more through word-of-mouth and home viewing than theatrical returns.
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The film stars Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Poppy Liu as professional shoplifters targeting Moore’s cutthroat fashion empire, with a supporting cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, Will Poulter, and Eiza González. Del Toro’s public endorsement — and Riley’s canny amplification of it — arrives just as the film heads into its second weekend, a critical window for any indie hoping to sustain momentum.
