The Hermit
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Noel David Taylor, Mitchell Taylor
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A frazzled young man holed up in a trailer in the woods gets interrupted by a traveling salesman. That's the whole premise — what unfolds is a two-hander between a man who wants to vanish and a man who is paid to refuse that.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Two brothers directing a movie about a guy who wants to be left alone getting hassled by a stranger. The pitch is so deliberately small I assume it's hiding something nasty underneath — that's how this genre works when it works.
A door-to-door salesman pitch as existential intrusion — capitalism literally knocking on a hermit's door — is a clean two-hander premise, and the Taylor brothers tend to know how to hold the dread. Coens-meets-Robinson is fair.
Door-to-door salesman as capitalism literally knocking on a hermit's trailer is a clean two-hander premise, but the page summary is thin enough that I'm rating the concept rather than evidence of execution. Taylor brothers' track record helps.