Chris Skotchdopole’s feature writing-directing debut Crumb Catcher is a stylish, bizarro corkscrew of a black-comedy-thriller—the less you know about it (including the significance of the title), the better your experience is likely to be. Developed from a story concocted by Skotchdopole along with producer Larry Fessenden, himself a renegade actor and indie director much beloved in cult horror circles, and actor Rigo Garay, it is borderline absurd in its plotting, but somehow just holds together, barreling through potential logical inanities through sheer force of will and warped humor. Skotchdopole proves himself to be quite adept at packing in great deals of narrative information in minimal screen time, although he perhaps has some work to do in developing more likeable characters.

The film’s protagonists are Shane (Rigo Garay) and Leah (Ella Rae Peck), who we meet during the post-nuptial photoshoot at their wedding reception. Various tensions are made immediately clear, notably the presence of Leah’s overbearing and controlling mother who has paid for the wedding and Shane’s status as an emerging author who has recently penned a memoir about his tortured relationship with his abusive father (who is notably absent). Leah works for the publishing company that is about to publish Shane’s book, which adds additional complexity to their romantic backstory, the details of which they cannot agree on. Frustrated at one point, Shane stalks off, and we catch up with him the next morning as he wakes with a major hangover, still dressed in his wedding suit. The disgusted look on Leah’s face when she comes through the door tells us everything we need to know about how badly the wedding night went (although there is, unfortunately, more to learn).

But, no matter—there is still a honeymoon to be had, which they plan to spend in the modernist-chic house of Leah’s boss, which is conveniently located in an isolated section of the woods. Before they can get away, though, they are stuck in an awkward conversation with John (John Speredakos), a waiter at their wedding who feels the need to apologize and over-explain what happened to the top section of their wedding cake. John is the worst kind of self-ingratiating talker, the kind who just keeps going and going long after it is clear that his point has been made. He has a sweaty, anxious quality about him, and while he seems to be nice enough (if socially maladjusted), there are hints that all is not right.

The honeymoon in the woods gets off to a rocky start when Shane suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to publish the book anymore and old tensions and animosities surface in strong fashion, but then he and Leah make up and things seem to be going well for once … and then John shows up again. In the middle of the night. Banging on the door. In the dark. With the top of the wedding cake that was so important to him, but completely unimportant to Shane and Leah in hand. And this time, he isn’t alone. Instead, he has his frustrated wife, Rose (Lorrain Farris), with him, and to say much more runs the risk of ruining the pleasures that Crumb Catcher offers, namely an escalating series of improbable, but compelling events that create a late-night standoff between the newlyweds and their unwanted guests. For anyone who has ever found themselves trapped in an endless, awful sales pitch the throngs of which you can’t wait to escape, Crumb Catcher will resonate with dark, brutal familiarity.

Of course, any such situation is bound to push the bounds of logic, and to his credit Skotchdopole builds in a good amount of justification for his characters’ sometimes questionable decisions (some particularly sordid leverage held over Shane makes the situation move forward when it otherwise it probably wouldn’t). The cinematography by Adam Carboni is sharp and sometimes a little too showy for its own good, but you can’t begrudge him some flourish given that most of the film’s second half transpires in a single room. What really works, though, are the performances, especially John Speredakos as John. Once he arrives on the scene, he takes over with his shaggy hair, toothy grin, and seemingly at-odds combination of an incessant desire to please and a barely repressed rage. Lorraine Farris’s Rose is more desperate and shrill and, in her own weirdly remarkable way, reasonable. As Shane and Leah, Garay and Peck have to balance their characters’ seething issues with their need to get out of a situation that spirals downward quickly. The already present tensions between them escalate what is happening around them, but one wonders if the film might have worked a little better if they were able to generate more sympathy early on. As is, they are both relatively selfish characters whose eventual suffering often feels like just desserts.

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