NUKE

The scouts

Most comedians would punch down or up; Bauman-Murphy punches sideways—trapping her clown in a showcase that's suddenly meaningless while the world ends, and finding the joke in that moral vertigo rather than the missile itself. It's genuinely subversive in how it refuses to choose between the personal and the apocalyptic, and that refusal is the whole film.

The film's restraint is its architecture: the darkly comic register never overwhelms the structural tension between performance and annihilation, recalling a lineage of shorts that use tonal collision as formal argument rather than gimmick. Bauman-Murphy's control of scale—keeping us in the comedy club even as the stakes atomize—sits in intelligent conversation with works that weaponize mise-en-scène.

The gambit lives or dies on whether we believe the clown's desperation matters *more* than the alert, and Bauman-Murphy locks that in one decision—cutting away from any external chaos, keeping the camera claustrophobic in that green room—which makes her struggle the entire world, and suddenly everything lands.

Reviews

Full in-depth interview (opened and read on 2026-09-24) with star Alli Brown and director Kelsea Bauman-Murphy covering the film's premise — a clown comedian forcing her way onto a showcase during a nuclear alert — the writing, casting, tone, and real-time production.

Festivals

• Oak Cliff Film Festival, Special Jury Mention
• Nòt Film Fest, Best Actress (Alli Brown)
• New/Next Film Festival, Selection
• Nitehawk, Selection
• Filmfort, Selection