A newlywed couple is held captive in a remote lake house by a maniacally optimistic inventor and his sour wife who are desperate to finance his dream project with a half-baked blackmail plot.
Grimmfest Says: An increasingly nightmarish pitch-black comedy of social discomfort and deluded optimism that escalates gradually into a violent hostage situation, Chris Skotchdopole’s feature film directorial debut is gripping, narratively slippery and queasily hilarious. Taking time to establish the tensions and differences that exist in the newly-wed couple’s relationship even before they are put to the test, the film ruthlessly skewers issues of class, cultural assumption, and hypocrisy of all kinds, giving all of the characters light and shade, complexity and motivation, in keeping with Jean Renoir’s famous maxim of cinema characterisation, that: “Everyone has their reasons.” If we end up rooting for the newly-weds by default, because they are the victims, we are also never allowed to forget that they aren’t particularly nice people, either.
All four lead performances are perfectly judged, but John Speredakos is quite spectacular, alternating between pathetic and terrifying as the increasingly unhinged would-be inventor, essentially an extortionist badger-gaming people with the aid of his long-suffering wife, but convinced he’s the next Thomas Edison or Henry Ford. Culminating in a climax that qualifies it to be part of both of the Festival’s themed strands this year, this is a film that continually defies expectation at every twist and turn.