PONDEROSA
****
Directed by Rob Rice.
Starring Bill Camp, Jack Dylan Grazer, Alexis Bledel. Nicholas Podany.
Drama, US, 88 Minutes.
Reviewed as part of Tubi FrightFest London 2026 - European Premiere
There’s always one at every FrightFest. One film that divides the audience straight down the middle into polar opposite camps of those who love it and those who absolutely hate it. This year it seems that that particular honour could go to Rob Rice’s abstract and intriguing PONDEROSA. Ostensibly telling the tale of an awkward relationship that spans a generational divide, there also seems to be a critique in here of a certain type of masculinity, as well as the stagnating nature of an America that is losing itself in a maze of strip malls and identikit suburbs.
Jack Dylan Grazer plays Zeke, an aimless youth who hangs out with his mother Sandra (Alexis Bledel), a waitress at the titular chain restaurant. One day in the parking lot, he is accosted by the much older George, who seems obsessed with taking Zeke under his wing in an unsettlingly paternal way. Giving Zeke a job at one of his construction sites, where more blandly familiar housing estates are being built up, George desperately seeks out a connection with Zeke, a prospect that the young man is either completely disinterested in or oblivious to. Gradually we begin to see hints that George’s quest for validation may hide an ulterior, sinister yet obscure motive.
Rice’s film comes across as an exercise in awkwardness, perhaps similar to last year's FRIENDSHIP which Grazer also appeared in. That dark film, which explored the more ridiculous and surreal aspects of male friendship, looks like a mainstream buddy comedy in comparison to this. Each scene scales up in its own unsettling fashion to a sharp conclusion which also contains one of the biggest jump scares that could be found in this year's festival. Described as Bunuelian in the festival programme notes, it could also be described as Lynchian, particularly in its post credit scene that seems to suggest some otherworldly presence that watches over everything giving the film another unsettling layer to poke through and theorise over.
As a comedy, it is more interested in making you feel awkward and uncomfortable than it is in making you laugh. Despite playing an aimless young blank, Grazer manages to hold his own against the more expressive hangdog features of the great Bill Camp, a familiar face from a number of prestige TV dramas and films from the past few years. Although Camp does not really have a stock character type that he always plays, this is still unfamiliar ground we see him in here. His awkward attempts to connect with Zeke range from the embarrassing to the sinister, coming just short of inappropriate at times yet never distancing enough to make you despise him.
With its look at a country becoming increasingly lost in itself in ever more obscure ways, Rice’s vision, sometimes aided by deliberately artificial visual means to get the point across, is one that will stick in the mind after a single viewing. Whether you want it to or not, there is a darkness underneath throughout that will stick with you long after.
Iain MacLeod