THE WAVE

Stars: Justin Long, Donald Faison, Katia Winter, Sheila Vand, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Sage, Sarah Minnich, Monique Candelaria, Ronnie Gene Blevins and Blythe Howard.
Writer: Carl W. Lucas
Director: Gille Klabin

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A riff on A Christmas Carol in which Ebenezer Scrooge swallows The Red Pill is a good starting point for those readying to partake of Gille Klabin’s trippy, challenging, wholly satisfying freak-out, The Wave. The debut feature for the music vid/short film director utilises skills honed over a decade in that visually exciting sector in its representation of one morally wayward man’s descent into a drug-fuelled world of paranoia, psychedelica, time-tripping and life lessons.

With always engaging leading man Justin Long (pictured, above; with co-star Donald Faison) ensuring audiences stay connected despite some often out-there narrative developments, The Wave will play as well with those that dig anxiety-inducing adventures like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours as it will with those still under the influence of whatever helped them just enjoy nine hours of nightclubbing.

Long plays Frank, an insurance lawyer introduced salivating over the career opportunity that denying benefits to the family of a dead fireman will bring. Too long in the professional trenches and with a cash-strapped domestic life teetering on the abyss of banality, Frank decides to connect with his partying workmate Jeff (Donald Faison) for some midweek bar-hopping. The pair are soon doing shots with cool twenty-somethings Natalie (Katia Winter) and Theresa (Sheila Vand; pictured, below), who convince them the night is young (it isn’t) and a party with harder narcotics ought to be their first destination (it oughtn’t).

To impress Theresa and share in some tongue-led dual drug taking, Frank allows himself to be led astray by charismatic dealer Aeolus (a terrific Tommy Flanagan). Much to Frank’s increasing panic, the chemical indulgence leads to a lost wallet, an angry wife, hours of blacked-out time, a nightmarish psychotic episode during a boardroom presentation and, most troublingly, instantaneous jumps in time and place. The misadventures lead to a life-threatening few hours in the company of unhinged lowlife Ritchie (Ronnie Gene Blevins), until Frank comes to terms with his newly-acquired superpower and sets about making right the insanity of his life, past and present.

With Carl W Lucas’ script wisely building character and tension before transitioning into its clever, more fantastical genre twists, Long and Klabin craft an everyman’s journey through an otherworldly landscape that is both familiar but off-kilter enough to intrigue and ultimately amaze. It is to the actor’s credit that Frank is more than just the scumbag attorney/unfaithful spouse the first act of the film allows him to be. Klabin’s faith in Long’s empathic qualities (underused by Hollywood in leading parts, for some reason) pays off when the narrative niftily reveals its ace-in-the-hole. As the hedonistic bud who leads Frank astray, Faison is funny and suitably incredulous when the laws of physics are restructured in front of him; as Theresa, the girl for whom Frank is willing to alter his life’s trajectory after a few minutes in her company, the lovely Vand is well cast.

The transition from real world stability into time-leaping psychosis is made all the more convincing by the rich aural depth the production constructs. Tech contributions from sound design vet Eric Offin and mixer Carlos Garcia’s team heighten the already pretty ‘high’ visuals that Klabin and effects supervisor Eric Thelander conjure. That The Wave works with such transcendent qualities on the heart as well as the head is indicative of the great work done by all departments.

The Wave Official Trailer from Epic Pictures Group on Vimeo.