Apocalypse Now Now
2017 · 8m · Sudáfrica
Directed by Michael Matthews
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, surreal
Baxter Zevcenko may be a serial killer: his girlfriend Esme is missing and he is the prime suspect, so to clear his name he turns to Cape Town's fastest, drunkest bounty hunter, Jackson 'Jackie' Ronin — unaware that Ronin is a supernatural bounty hunter.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A serial killer procedural that pivots into supernatural bounty hunting noir — it's exactly the kind of premise that makes you rewind and ask 'wait, how did they sell THAT?' Matthews refuses the obvious genre lane and somehow makes Cape Town's drunk paranormal detective the sanest thing on screen.
The tonal architecture here is disciplined: dark comedy doesn't undermine the thriller mechanics, it sharpens them, and the supernatural element arrives not as gimmick but as earned genre escalation that recalls the best of British genre pastiche.
That pivot from mundane crime suspect to supernatural-detective buddy movie hinges entirely on the casting and timing of Jackie Ronin's entrance — one actor's committed deadpan against Baxter's panic is the whole film, and Matthews trusts it completely.