Dig Your Own Grave
2019 · 14m · USA
Directed by Kirk Larsen
Genres: crime, dark comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous
Reggie brings Dan to the desert to have him dig his own grave — but it turns out to be harder than it sounds. What begins as a textbook mob hit unravels into a darkly comic standoff between two bumbling, increasingly philosophical hitmen.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally, someone takes a mob-movie cliché and actually excavates it—literally. The genius move here is refusing to resolve the premise early; instead of a quick execution, you get two guys stuck in escalating absurdist hell, which should be insufferable but somehow becomes genuinely funny and oddly humane.
Larsen works squarely in the Coen Brothers register of crime-procedural dark comedy, but the execution finds its own rhythm in restraint; the film's awareness of its genre antecedents sharpens rather than softens the comedy's edge.
The masterstroke is the casting and rhythm—two actors who understand how to milk awkward silence and the micro-reactions of people who realize they're trapped in an impossible situation together; that chemistry does all the heavy lifting a 13-minute short shouldn't be able to carry.
Reviews
Landing jokes is actually quite difficult and there are far more hits than misses here.
Subverts the cinematic trope of trimming mundane details by taking a mafia movie cliché literally — exploring what happens when a tough guy's one-liner threat must actually be executed to its logical, absurd conclusion.