The
Innkeepers’ Pat Healy and Sara Paxton are reunited for this surprising, wild,
and highly entertaining flick. Healy is
an out of work mechanic with a mountain of debt who runs into an old friend
(Ethan Embry) at a strip club who ekes out a living as a skeevy loan
shark. While hanging out, they get
propositioned by a rich couple (David Koechner and Paxton) to do stupid dares
for money. As the monetary value goes
up, the dares naturally get riskier.
They head back to the couple’s home where they notice a safe loaded with
cash. Embry decides to rip him off, which is
about when all hell breaks loose.
Co-written
by Troma alum Trent Haaga, Cheap Thrills offers a good mix of hardboiled drama,
crime comedy, and balls-out horror. The
way the social awkwardness escalates into flat-out savagery is often surprising
and funny. It’s a great social
commentary on how far a cash-strapped working-class person will go to provide
for their family, as well as how the rich delight in fucking around with poor
people.
The
performances are uniformly great. Healy has
a nice Everyman quality about him, and you feel bad when he winds up way in
over his head. Embry (who’s quickly becoming
the go-to guy for indie horror movies after Late Phases and The Devil’s Candy) is
equally absorbing as the unscrupulous friend who eventually shows signs of a
conscience. Koechner is perfectly cast
as the loudmouth asshole. He has a knack
of saying something disturbing, but playing it off like he’s joking (although
you have the sinking suspicion he’s dead serious). Paxton fares well as the blonde vixen who suggests
there’s more to her seemingly vapid exterior.
Cheap
Thrills is alternately darkly humorous and hair-raising. Director E.L. Katz gets the most out of his talented
cast and the minimal locations. Situations
have a way of unexpectedly blowing up or taking odd left turns, and Katz plays
them up to the hilt. The finale is especially
powerful.
In
short, there’s nothing cheap about these thrills.
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