Starring: Pat Healy, Ethan Embry, Dave Koechner
Facing both eviction and unemployment, mechanic Craig (Healy) slumps off to a bar to drown his sorrows where he bumps into his old high school friend Vince (Embry). As the night goes on, Craig and Vince begin to party with the very wealthy Colin (Koechner) and is much younger wife, Violet (Sara Paxton). Through the night, Colin keeps daring Craig and Vince to commit various stunts and pranks for more and more money, only for the stakes to get dangerously higher each time.
An independent violent thriller with an ear towards very dark comedy, Cheap Thrills is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but for some people's taste, it has something to offer. It's easy to read this film at first glance as first and foremost a comedy. An assumption probably aided by the highest-profile piece of casting in Dave Koechner, best known as Camp Kind in the Anchorman movies (2005 - 2013. Koechner's performance definitely leans on comedy, though with less of an emphasis on Champ's "good ol' boy" schtick, and in a (slightly) more straight-laced performance.
However, Cheap Thrills is an extremely dark film for its comedic trappings. Given a 15 certificate ahead of its main UK release, this film really pushes that certificate. The sex is there but restrained (a strip club is seen, but only with women in lingerie, there's also a sex scene but pretty much done fully-clothed) but the violence is often brutal and the overall atmosphere is surprisingly dark. The film's use of the house party gone wrong and themes of class exploitation lending vague (possibly coincidental) comparisons to controversial video nasty, House On The Edge Of The Park (1980).
As far as our leads go, Pat Healy and Ethan Embry give adequate performances, even if their characters tend to only go though the same emotional reactions time and time again. Healy plays the nine to five punch clock working man with ambitions that never quite worked out, whilst Embry plays the teen rebel who never quite grew up. Two well-defined characters but not wholly original whilst Sara Paxton's performance as Koechner's girlfriend, a spaced-out aspiring (and seemingly pretty poor) musician is intriguingly played but also lacks depth. Still, an audience wanting to see Cheap Thrills is probably there to watch just that, and not be too bothered by character development and as a slice of small, gritty entertainment, Cheap Thrills does get the job done.
Cheap Thrills will be released in the UK on the 6th of June.
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