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Canberra Today 18°/22° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: “Project-X” (MA) ?

NIMA Nourisadeh’s first movie may have taken for its template Corey Delaney’s party on January 14, 2008, when 500 teenagers trashed the Delaney home in Narre Warren while his oldies were away.

On Thomas’s (Thomas Mann) 17th birthday, his parents are off for a weekend of marital whatever leaving Tom with clear and reasonable instructions about celebrating in their absence.

Tom’s a nerd, as are his besties – overweight JB (Jonathan Brown) and Costa (Oliver Cooper), at 18 years and six months old, legally an adult in California. Costa, unrestrained by conscience, using Tom’s lack of assertiveness to further his own ambition to ejaculate his sperm into as many acquiescing young women as possible, uses social networks, face-to-face and posters to tell Pasadena’s young folk where and when. They’re all invited.

A fourth nerd, Dax, unseen until late in the film, is there to capture the event on video. The amateurish result making the film visually uncomfortable, matches its intentions.

As parties go, this one’s a world-beater, liquor, sex, rock ‘n roll, ecstasy tabs, you name it, these kids are off the leash and ready to make the most of it. The outcome is a suburban precinct consumed by fire when a neighbour turns a flame thrower on the crowd in an attempt to scare them into a semblance of restraint. Fat chance!

Nourisadeh seems to have made a cautionary tale to warn how easily things can spin out of control when parental and police controls fail. There was me and a quintet of late-teen men at the screening. They seemed to find it a blast. The film portrays a social bushfire, a single spark in the wrong place having the potential to become a raging conflagration beyond human control until its fuel is exhausted. Parents, be frightened.

At Dendy, Hoyts and Limelight.

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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