Posted August 6, 2019 by Raquel Stecher Film Reviews

Nothing Really Happens

“Ohhh. You’re at a crossroads.”
Behth

Dave (Adam Edwards) drifts through life just going through the motions day in and day out. He’s the face of Mattress Temple, the mattress store he inherited from his dad. When he’s not at work he’s at home having awkward interactions with his emotionally distant wife Jess (Lindsay Gustin). One day everything changes. He learns from his sole employee Miguel (Sami Ismail ) that the health department investigated a bed bug infestation and shut down the store until further notice. Someone is leaving mysterious piles of poop in his neighbor Carl’s (Joseph Graham) yard. A strange old woman is lurking behind trees. Jess seems more disconnected from Dave than ever. Dave decides to take up smoking and has an odd encounter with an angry store clerk Behth (Anna Tran). Then there are the glitches in time, mysterious globs of blood, a urinal that serves as a time portal and a deer man who appears out of nowhere. Half way through Dave’s journey everything resets and we discover that nothing really happened. Everything is back as it once was but Dave starts to question what was reality and what was a figment of his imagination. It turns out that his well-meaning but misguided friend Randy (Bobby Dornbos) has put him through subconscious coercion therapy and tries to reset the damage of the first go ‘round. Dave struggles to make sense of what has happened or hasn’t happened as he uncovers even more confusing secrets about his reality.

“Do you think people notice how unaware they are?”
Randy

Nothing Really Happens is a quirky, offbeat film that blends The Matrix with Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind. This Houston-based indie is writer/director Justin Petty’s film debut. It’s part science fiction, part comedy, part horror and 100% weird. You have to be in the right head space for this film otherwise it can overwhelm you with its peculiar brand of storytelling. The film serves as a metaphysical exploration of how disconnected we are as a society. Throughout the story there are various truth bombs dropped on the audience that make us pause and wonder if we’re really present in our own realities or if we’re detached like Dave.