LOADING
Directed by Simon Glassman | 99 minutes | 15+ | Victorian Premiere |
3:30pm Friday, 15 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 4 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
NO MATTER WHO WINS, WE LOSE. DIRECT FROM FANTASIA AND SXSW SYDNEY 2025
Co-Presented by University of Melbourne Film Society
Two restaurants wage war in the fictional town of Westridge County, as seen through fragments of local televsion. Ads for insurance, used car rivals, a local religious scholar, and a recording artist converge to tell the story of an expanding sinkhole, a cult, and an ever-growing restaurant that becomes unsettlingly sentient.
While Buffet Infinity indulges the nostalgic charm of its bygone era of regional TV, it’s more interested in the inherently sinister qualities of business large and small across time. Its channel surfing isn’t that far away from doomscrolling, and writer-director Simon Glassman impressively stitches together hundreds of little gags and frights to accumulate a supremely creepy mood and coherent story. By the end, there may be no difference between the real world and the ad world.
SIMILAR: Tim and Eric, The Falls (1980), Pontypool, SCTV
"If it's a trade-off between a movie stretching itself out past sanity in order to really make us feel like we've lost our damn minds by the absolute WTF-ery of its galaxy-brained conclusion, then I'll happily submit myself to the former to achieve the latter." - Jason Adams, Pajiba
"The production design, the music, the graphics – it’s as if the filmmakers found a time machine, went back to 1995, and stole all of the assets needed to make these as authentic as possible." - Billy Ray Brewton, Cinepunx
Country: Canada
Year: 2025
Language: English