Director Branden Wittchen
Starring Madeline Armit, Nicolas Angelosanto & Chris Slater
Score 5/6

When Rick goes to meet his fiancée’s Dad at his country home, he finds himself in a surreal nightmare world that he can’t escape from.

It’s been a few years since I last watched a movie that is scheduled to be featured in the Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF). A large portion of the SUFF films that I have watched are the type of films that you wouldn’t expect to watch at your regular neighbourhood cinema. What immediately struck me was the decision to shoot the movie in Black and White. The last ‘modern’ movie that I remember reviewing was Mondo Yakuza (2017). I also loved the delight Madeline Armit had delivering the ‘mummy’s boy’ line. I will admit that it took me a while to get over the initial awkwardness that the movie had. Though considering that the film is about meeting your fiancée’s father, the awkwardness is understandable. Writer/Director Branden Wittchen certainly delivered some stunning shots of the farm on which the movie was set. But what was a stroke of creative genius was the decision to tell two versions of the same story and the opportunities that gave his actors. Nicolas Angelosanto went from being terrified and sympathetic in the first story to narcissistic douchebag in the second. While Chris Slater who portrayed Kirsty’s Dad went from terrifying to emotional. Having never seen any movies featuring Nicolas Angelosanto before, I will admit that early on in the film I briefly mistook Angelosanto for Matthew Vennell (I enjoyed his performance in the TV series Eugenie Sandler P.I.); that thought was quickly dismissed as a mistake when I remembered I first watched Eugenie Sandler P.I. 20 years ago and Angelosanto clearly couldn’t have been Vennell. The end credits certainly were unique ‘I haven’t seen that done before’ kind of way.