Relaxer is a 2019 dark comedy about a man faced with the ultimate challenge on the verge of Y2K and he can’t get off the couch until he conquers it.
It’s perhaps best to start any conversation about writer / director Joel Potrykus‘ latest experiment with a warning. Relaxer is outrageous. There is nothing remotely appealing about what’s on screen, purposefully engineered and crafted to be grating and uncomfortable, every scene meant to make you squirm with viciously irritating characters and a hopelessly troubling setting. You must know going in that there is no hope or answers in the plight of the film’s few characters and yet I can say with no reservations, this is also infuriatingly compelling, from the slug of a ‘protagonist’ who dominates the story, to the ebony core of its dark heart, thumping with desynchronized beats to a rhythm you’ve never heard before.
As the year 2000 approaches, in the bleak center of an almost rancid apartment, sits Abbie (Joshua Burge), shirtless, in his underwear and socks, a Nintendo 64 game controller in his hands. Circling him like a ravenous vulture is his brother Cam (David Dastmalchian), endlessly berating him as he has Abbie attempting to complete his latest ‘art’ challenge. It doesn’t end well. Still wanting to prove himself, Abbie takes on another, playing Pac-Man to the infamous level 256 but told he cannot move from the sofa. For anything. Now alone and realizing he needs supplies to survive but not willing to get out of his seat, he calls upon some ‘friends’ to bring him what he needs, though soon enough he is on a disturbing descent as time and Pac-Man steadily consume him.
Burge is a sallow shell of a man, his pasty drab flesh, sunken eyes and greasy hair making him increasingly unpleasant to watch. He sits mostly unmoving throughout the movie, the camera tracking within a few feet in either direction of his sofa as he struggles to defeat both the game and surely a few demons nestled in his psyche. He’s clearly unstable or at least a little setback than most, his brother a traumatic influence that lords over him with great menace. Their father is out of the picture, having abandoned them years ago, though Abbie doesn’t quite seem to know what that means, his defense mechanism a pair of 3D theater glasses that he hides behind when riled up. Though perhaps they do more than shield him. This is a film almost slovenly awash in metaphor.
That said, the labyrinthine themes of the game he plays might seem obvious as he battles to defeat a challenge that can’t be won. Abbie succumbs to desperation, slipping into a kind of atrophied state from the hips down while he puzzles over how to sustain himself even though all he needs to do is get up. We’re meant to puzzle ourselves over what is happening and if what we’re seeing is through our eyes or Abbie’s. Some of that, or rather, well, a lot of it, is distressing. Just how much time slips by? We hear a date early in the challenge that already derails where we thought we might be, and as the film progresses, we wonder further what kind of delirium has befallen him by the time the new year (and certain expectations about that date) arrive. It’s unsettling to be sure.
Relaxer is not for everyone and is surely going to divide its audience with no grey area between those who will embrace its lunacy and those who will readily dismiss it. I’m well in the former camp, a fan of the odd story and the work of Burge, who, with hardly any movement, delivers a creepy and jarring performance that deserves critical attention. Either way, the film’s second half is better than the rest but absolutely couldn’t work without first. Potrykus is working on a whole other level here, culminating his efforts into a truly bizarre and horrifying spectacle of madness that is nothing if not fuel for heated debates.