Trivial
2018 · 14m · España
Directed by Fran Menchón, Sandra Reina
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Chicho and Macarena have the Trivial board ready and expect an easy win over Paloma and Miguel — until their guests produce a lucky coin and the game turns tense, with far more than the match at stake.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A board game thriller where the stakes pivot from embarrassing to genuinely dangerous—this is the kind of premise that sounds ridiculous until it isn't, and the film commits to that tonal whiplash with real nerve. The lucky coin is such a beautifully stupid MacGuffin, and watching two couples disintegrate over Trivial is exactly the subversive domestic trap nobody else would dare make funny AND terrifying.
Menchón and Reina demonstrate precise control over escalation and genre blending, situating their work in a lineage of European dark comedy that understands how parlor games become pressure chambers; the editing rhythm in particular knows exactly when to let discomfort breathe and when to snap back to levity.
The decision to keep the coin as the film's gravitational center—visible, ordinary, almost incidental—rather than make it the dramatic focus is what transforms a good premise into something genuinely unsettling; it's the kind of restraint that costs nothing but attention and elevates everything built around it.