Termite
2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ian White
Genres: dark comedy, drama, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic
A man receives a state execution notice from California with no charge attached and spends the day trying to bum a ride to the injection site. Bureaucratic horror played as a deadpan transportation problem.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The state wants to execute him, fine — but how does he get to the appointment? That's the whole movie and it's genuinely funny and genuinely bleak.
Kafka by way of Aki Kaurismäki: the bureaucratic-execution premise is sturdy, and Ian White seems to trust the gallows-shrug rather than over-explain it.
State execution arrives with no charge attached and the protagonist's only problem is finding a ride to the injection site — that's the bureaucratic-Lanthimos premise of the year, played with the deadpan it deserves.
Reviews
The film's tone and deliveries are deadpan and mildly Lynchian, a desolate portrayal of dystopia uniquely mundane and metaphorically resonant.