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.
