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Title: Relaxer (2018)
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| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Joshua Burge | ... | Abbie | |
| David Dastmalchian | ... | Cam | |
| Andre Hyland | ... | Dallas | |
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Mahfuz Rahman | ... | Janitor Jim |
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Madigan Bachman | ... | Janitor Mal (as Madi Bachman) |
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Adina Howard | ... | Arin |
| Amari Cheatom | ... | Cortez | |
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Jeen Na | ... | Joao |
| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Joe Anderson | ... | Brad Matuzak (voice) |
With the impending Y2K apocalypse fast approaching, Abbie is faced with the ultimate challenge - the unbeatable level 256 on Pac-Man - and he can't get off the couch until he conquers it. A survival story set in a living room.
This achieves a transcendence on the couch. It is the same mythos of the heroes journey, a trip through hell returning with enlightenment with various challengers along the way. It peaks as the archangel suddenly sees the world through new eyes, and smites wickedness. Eerie as he reaches there, we are suddenly viewing this film no different than Lord of the Rings or The Odyssey. It delves into Y2K, and we get that once in a while, the Mayan Prophecy, etc; so this transcendence creates this association between now with primitivism. A labyrinthic heart of darkness. Comedically, this is the natural escalation of post-irony: we go so far into self-reference, the illusion would be breached. The mystery of those 8-bit games is they are so much larger than the screen because they exclusively operate in our imaginations due to limited graphics and technology. The thing is, this sort of thing is very popular and common: I often wondered there must be untold secrets in those 8bit worlds, and I was not alone...new secrets are being found, new records achieved. It's as if the mathematical limitations of the code are constantly tested in our attempts to meet the limitations before us. It is a challenge to our very humanity to best the gods. The thing is Nietzschean as it explores the human impulse to break the code, same as the filmmakers impulse to go somewhere that might seem obvious yet few do with means, and that is to push the limits of irony--this is not for its own sake, nor is it an indulgence, rather the challenge there to breach is a challenge history asked of us, as this is the frame that preceded us. So by pioneering and stretching the spectrum further, one is constantly surprised to find there are outcomes. It challenges Warhol that everything has been done, and how wrong he was--nothing has been done. Evolution is a constant burden. The film operates like the 8-bit in itself. It barely ever shows the game, it doesn't delve into the challenge. It isn't interested in the science fiction of it. The film is everything but the film. It just shows him on the couch. It is entirely an abstraction. A theater of the slacker, where even the genX slacker is now an archetype from history, we show him in his environment where he is not even active but zoned out. The cliche was we wasted our lives away, here, no: the immersion was the journey itself. Interesting the effect of frames and how it operates mythically is why the running time never drags. Burge is the west on collapse. He is the mercy of the world. We read the world through his eyes, and the film offers this very Klaus Kinski, or Kurtz Brando for him at the end. He plays the journey somehow. Then in the process of finding the secrets of the game, he becomes the game. The One. That it culminates on Y2K shows a parallel reality that he has changed the course of history by cracking the 1s and 0s. This is the Y2K that happened. The post-irony often lands at changing history because this is the current day digital frame that accommodates us-anywhere we take it, it accommodates-our narcissism has become the world entire. In indulging this, it somehow grants millennials and post-millennials outcomes, saying whatever is the economic, cultural, or societal collapse, everything is going according to plan.