A food delivery driver with a gambling problem and serious debts falls foul of a sinister snowplow driver.
Director Joey Palmroos and actors Alexander Arnold, Arthur Sylense, Liam James Collins and Nadine Higgin who will introduce and Q&A.
Grimmfest Says: Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way first. On the surface, this seems like simply a mischievous riff on Spielberg’s seminal man versus machine classic, DUEL, only relocated to the Wintery Minnesota woodlands at night, and with a snow plow rather than a freight tanker as the hero’s nemesis. But Joey Palmroos’ tense and tricksy thriller has a lot more going on under the hood than at first appears; retooling and refitting a seemingly familiar vehicle, and then sending it off in an entirely unfamiliar direction. It’s a film less about high concepts than it is about the telling human details, the quirky bits of character and humour: Alexander Arnold’s feckless, hapless, morally-compromised slacker protagonist, such a sharp contrast to Dennis Weaver’s travelling salesman everyman; the aggressively mouthy female money lender he is in hock to; the various encounters with Minnesota locals with their eccentric accents (the Sheriff’s Deputy, Nathan, is particularly entertaining); the goldfish whose life hangs in the balance (yes, seriously), which, in and of themselves make for a very different cinematic experience to DUEL, even before the narrative trajectory starts to divert wildly from expectations, and the conflict goes… off road. It’s a ride you won’t forget, to a place you might not expect.
Part of our FEAR ON FOUR WHEELS strand.
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