The Adventure

A short that brings horror comedy to an all-new, tongue-in-cheek level, "The Adventure" tells the story of a retired couple who experience a strange encounter on a quiet, forested road.

Director Mike Brune is not afraid to have his camera linger for long periods on the scene. It's a refreshingly classic technique not practised very often these days -- there's something reminiscent of The Shining with its use in this film. With the rest of the cinema audience, I teetered between amusement at the absurdity of the situation and a kind of foreboding feeling: there's some strange sense of malevolence in this film, a sensation of danger and violence being mere moments away.

The perfectly-delivered comic dialogue is the icing on the cake. If Donald Barthelme had been a filmmaker, he would have made something like this. It's definitely worth a look; at the time of writing, it's playing at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival.

This movie was really great. The acting was excellent from all four actors (and the mimes showed real professionalism), but the direction was the phenomenal part. I would call this a minimalist comedy, like Woody Allen or Jim Jarmusch used to do. A majority of the movie is not humor-based, but the humor that's there is high-quality. The plot is pretty clear from the description above, no need to repeat it. The creepy part comes from the fact that there is NO background music and some strange things happen. It's not scary, but a little tense at times. There are a few slow, dull parts that don't add to anything, so it loses a couple points there. Otherwise, I recommend this movie to any adult. It's probably a little too subtle for children.