We see David and his impossible to please wife, Jess (Lindsay Gustin), his neighbor, Randy (Bobby Dornbos), and friend Carl (Joseph Graham), who are as annoying as they are eccentric. His impossibly dim-witted sidekick, Miguel (Sami Ismail), who works at the mattress store David inherited from his family, seems to be existing in a distant galaxy — mentally at least. Strange things start happening, among them, piles of poop speared with tiny French flags pop up on David’s neighbor’s lawn. The mystery gets weirder when an old woman appears in front of David’s home one night and makes some puzzling pronouncements.
“…finally coheres into a story — if you stay with it.”
Carl, a metaphysics-talking strange-o, plays a significant part in tying together the loose ends, as much as that’s possible in such an outlandish story. He binge watches videos of dream studies guru Dr. Hubbard (Stephani Palmer), which curiously enough have the same flickery look we’ve seen in the mattress commercials.
Can all of this be tied together into something that makes sense? For the most part it does. Nothing Really Happens finally coheres into a story — if you stay with it. Speculative fiction fans will probably get a boot out of it, but exercising a bit of patience is a key requirement in getting to the bottom of this strange, somewhat scatalogically fixated tale.
Nestled into the closing credits, the director gives a shout out to the “greasy coke-head director” that told him you can’t make a movie without money. Obviously, this is evidence that proves him wrong. It’s hard not to like the spirit behind that.
Nothing Really Happens (2018) Directed by Justin Petty. Written by Justin Petty. Starring Bobby Dornbos, Adam Edwards, Kam Franklin, Joseph Graham, Lindsay Gustin, Sami Ismail, AJ Latta, Anthony Obi, Stephani Palmer, Anna Tran.
6 out of 10 Peyote Buttons
