Cheap Thrills

How much money would it take to get you to do something totally depraved, like hack off your own finger? Everyone has their price in E.L. Katz’s twisted comedy, as old friends Craig (Healy) and Vince (Embry) are propositioned by a peculiar but loaded couple in a bar and lured into performing increasingly demented stunts, trading dignity for wads of crisp cash. Soon, in ménage-a-madness they return to Colin (Koechner) and Violet’s (Paxton) opulent abode, to perform for more ready money.

On a superficial level, Cheap Thrills is exactly that; a low-budget black comedy that delivers knuckle-munching moments of anxiety. Delve a little deeper though, and there is something Darwinian that will resonate with every Generation X-er’s post-recession rawness. These characters are achingly familiar, a reminder that all of us are willing to play our own private, primal games of commerce and sacrifice to get what we want from life. [Kirsty Leckie-Palmer]