Cheap Thrills

Overview

This weekend as part of their ongoing showcase of the sick, the sinister and the surreal, Cinema Nova invites audiences to a twisted game of big-screen one-upmanship, one that poses the simple, arresting question: how far would you go for the right amount of cash? A smart, disturbing, thriller-cum-morality play with excellent performances and liberal lashings of dark humour, EL Katz’s Cheap Thrills is a rare genre film that delivers on all the shock and horror of its premise, while also providing far more brains than its title might initially suggest.

Pat Healy plays Craig, a mild-mannered husband and father in dire straits after being “downsized” out of a job. Drowning his sorrows in a bar, Craig happens across Vince (Ethan Embry), a long-lost buddy from high school. They get to talking, but are soon interrupted by Colin (Anchorman’s David Koechner), a coked-up, middle-aged party-animal with a bored young wife (Sara Paxton) and more money than he knows what to do with. Before long, Colin starts offering his new friends cash in exchange for dares. At first its little things: $100 to provoke a woman at the bar into slapping them, for example. But as the night goes on and the amount of money increases, so too do Colin’s challenges grow more and more extreme.

Katz relies heavily on his actors, none of whom let him down. Koechner, in particular, seems to relish the chance to work with darker material than his normal comedic roles, shifting from overbearingly friendly one moment to cold and calculating the next. As his wife, Sara Paxton likewise subverts our expectations, her stunning looks and air of amused indifference soon giving way to something far, far more intense. Embry and Healy, meanwhile, capture the confusion and turmoil of two very different men, both driven by desperation to lengths they never thought possible.

Indeed, Katz’s script contains a delightful sense of escalation, as he slowly pushes his two unsuspecting protagonists into increasingly twisted territory. At the same time, even the film’s most outlandish and repellent moment possess an uncomfortable plausibility. As Craig and Vince demean themselves for the amusement of their wealthy benefactors, one can’t help but sense the spectre of the global financial recession. Ultimately, for all its moments of depravity and violence, the most shocking thing about Cheap Thrills may be the realisation as to where we would draw the line for ourselves.

Cheap Thrills screens as part of Cinema Nova’s late night Cultastrophe stream and will be introduced by Katz and Healy via video. Other highlights on the current program include New York underground curio The Telephone Book and an Easter inspired, family friendly screening of the 60s stop motion classic Mad Monster Party.