Premise: A documentary-style movie about the regulars at a dive bar on the day that it's going out of business.
The most interesting thing about this movie is the deceptive style of the movie. It has the look of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Kind of like a Grey Gardens, where it's clear the subjects are aware of the camera but the filmmakers don't insist on being a character. I don't believe any of the people in the movie are professional actors. I believe they are actual bar regulars. The movie is definitely not all real though. The bar in the movie is in Las Vegas but the film was shot in Louisiana. There are too many shots, especially outdoors ones, that had to be staged to some degree. From what I've gathered, the movie was put together a lot like a reality TV shows. The filmmakers found some interesting real people to come to this bar and just shot what happened without additional guidance.
The movie does lose some of the allure knowing that it is semi-staged. Simply put, I do watch narrative and documentary features differently. The dynamics between these barflies are interesting, but it's less notable if they were recruited for being interesting rather than if the bar just naturally attracted them. It's kind of like how the guy from Grizzly Man is this unbelievable character, but if they made a movie that was completely accurate, no one would believe the performance of him. As soon as you recruit the barflies, they become less interesting than if they just happened to show up.
I was looking forward to this movie a lot. I enjoy good improv. I like found-footage horror movies. This sounded like a cool new way to blend reality and fiction. Really though, it ended up being a movie about bar patrons having sloppy conversations that I'd walk out of the room from in real life. It's a cool idea. Some of the people are decently interesting. The vignette structure works well for what the movie is. However, the cinematography isn't particularly inventive and this reminded me far too much of a genre of TV I don't care for either.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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