Thrashing
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Abyn Reabe, Nico Tepper
Genres: animation, satire, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
Saul, a lonely weed farmer, suffers waking dreams and missing time while a stranger starts trailing him home. The whole thing was shot inside Grand Theft Auto V, repurposed as a stoner sci-fi.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Filmed entirely inside GTA V and used to tell a stoner paranoia parable instead of a heist. That's the kind of misuse of a tool I want more of.
Reabe and Tepper make machinima entirely in GTA V director-mode — Rockstar's open world bent into slow-burn paranoia, Total Refusal's playbook with a lonelier protagonist. Form and content arguing productively.
Machinima made entirely in GTA V director-mode, bending Rockstar's open world into a slow-burn paranoia piece about a weed farmer — Reabe and Tepper's choice of engine is the whole craft statement, and it's a strong one.
Reviews
With its savvy GTA V 'director-mode' scene-to-scene, the film imagines its own unique world far outside that of the familiar video game.