★★★☆☆
A rich stranger decides he’s going to be a teenager’s father, whether the boy likes it or not – leading to a Lynchian suburban dead, thick and strange, that soaks into every liminal corner of this American nightmare.
Rob Rice’s second feature, fresh from competition at Tribeca, is the kind of film that seems to have fallen out of an alternate dimension. Teenage Zeke (Jack Dylan Grazer) drifts through a suburbia rendered as uncanny dreamscape – strange emptiness, unmoving clouds – until the chain buffet where his mother Sandra (Alexis Bledel) works is threatened with closure and a wealthy regular, George (Bill Camp), decides to insert himself into the boy’s life as a mentor and then, vehemently, as a literal father. Zeke is not enthused, but George is committed to his endeavours.
Rice has a superb eye for liminal spaces – deserted parking lots, out-of-favour chain eateries, McMansions – and uses them to build a compelling vision of the parasitic rot of Boomer America, that grim spiritual breakdown of the country’s middle. The word “Lynchian” is over-used but applies here; think Twin Peaks: The Return by way of late-night Adult Swim. Camp is the anchor, witty and doleful and never quite readable, and Grazer’s passive, wary presence makes an apt audience surrogate.
It is, by intention, somewhat ponderous, and the slide into satirical symbolism by the close will alienate as many as it enthrals. This is a film about Baby Boomers feeding on their young, pushing a warped vision of America that no longer lines up with the facts on the ground. For those on Ponderosa’s wavelength it’s a singular slice of American allegory. This is one for the liminal-horror faithful who like their comedy uneasy.
Ponderosa played at Tubi FrightFest in London.