Not since the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems have I experienced such a palpable feeling of intense unease and existential dread as I did from Will Crouse’s The Coder. Abbey Toot is Mary, a coder living at the edge of her wits and the tips of her fingers as she battles raging waves of expectation thrust venomously upon her by her tyrannical boss, Thad (Mickey O’Sullivan) in the quest to milk every dollar out of the volatile cash machine we call crypto.
But Mary has been living off too little sleep and too many pills, and this lack of self-care is about to make a bad day turn dark. Real dark. In fact, Mary’s co-workers (Sean Kazarian and Yuchi Chiu) are completely unaware of how close Mary is to breaking, on the same day the boss is bringing in new investors. The clock is ticking as Mary’s sanity is dripping away, with the entire company’s lifeblood, so to speak, in her hands.
“…a coder living at the edge of her wits and the tips of her finger…”
Beginning with a dose of potent nightmare fuel as we get a little look inside the tortured mind of Mary, until when the metaphorical sky falls, The Coder grabs you by the throat and just keeps squeezing. The plot being so incredibly driven by tension, the first question that comes to mind is, “How the hell did we get here?” Yet, as this is a short, we’re only going to see what Crouse has to show us, and it is strong and bold while leaving you wanting.
The cast is all solid, but Abbey Toot is remarkable without doing or saying much at all. Mickey O’Sullivan is as devilishly maniacal as Dennis Quaid in The Substance. His leering sleaze and hunger for power match perfectly with Toot’s brittle, unhinged brilliance, which makes The Coder a brief but astonishing display of short-form filmmaking.
"…a brief but astonishing display of short-form filmmaking..."
