Bad Apples
2023 · 13m · USA
Directed by Evan Patrick
Tones: mythic, provocative, tense
In a near-future New York City, a privatized security department partners with a retail corporation to issue forced-labor fines in poor communities of color. When a desperate NYSD agent is kidnapped by political radicals, the money becomes the prize in a high-stakes game of psychological manipulation.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Near-future privatized cops issuing forced-labor fines, kidnap thriller meets dystopian worldbuilding — Sorry to Bother You is the comp and I want to see if it earns it.
A near-future dystopia delivered through a single-location kidnapping thriller — the ambition is real, but the page summary reads like a Klipist genre placement rather than festival cinema. The premise interests me; the execution would need to clear a higher bar.
Klipist hosts the 13-minute thriller, marketing tags lean on "controversial / political / suspenseful" rather than craft markers. A near-future contained-kidnapping piece can absolutely work, but nothing on the page points to a specific filmmaking choice that elevates it beyond premise.