TOY GUN | Omeleto

A family gathers. Ellie is headed over to her estranged father's apartment in Brooklyn; it's her birthday, and she's promised to swing by on her way to another celebration. Her brother, Donnie, is also there, asking Ellie to feign some degree of enthusiasm at seeing her father. But on her way to her father's, sirens are ringing and helicopters fill the sky. When the chaos of the world collides with the chaos of Ellie's family, tensions rise to the surface, revelations come to light, and the family faces who they want to be for each other as the world falls apart around them. Directed by Keenan Gray and written by Keenan Gray and Davis Browne, this weathered, darkly funny family drama is a slice-of-life narrative about the fissures in a family unit, set amid a dystopian backdrop. Juxtaposing ordinary family dysfunction against the larger world catastrophe makes for a wry commentary on how family dynamics can persist, even in the midst of chaos and craziness. Ellie is the seemingly normal, competent anchor that guides us into a hornet's nest of familial tension and resentment, and the incisive and specific storytelling deftly sketches out the characters and dynamics with a sharp eye and ear for both emotional and geopolitical breakdowns. Ellie is firm and almost rigid in her anger towards her charming but wayward father; Donnie is an eccentric goofball who just wants everyone to get along; Ron is a rock 'n roll burnout who couldn't be different from his daughter. Played with live-in specificity by actors Scarlett Sperduto, Joey Leberer and Robert McCaskill, the family unit is a mess, no thanks to Ron's past peccadilloes, which have infuriated Ellie. How Ellie resolves her anger and resentment with her father is the emotional throughline of the story; how they deal with the world ending is the other. When both strands collide, it makes for surprising reveals, raw emotions and darkly humorous moments, all captured in a visual style that's naturalistic and anxious in its constant handheld movement and fractured editing. And though its ending eschews sentimentality in favor of the press of danger and catastrophe, TOY GUN nevertheless achieves a wary resolution for its characters, who must catapult themselves into the maw. We don't know where they're headed or what will happen, but for now, they're together -- for better or worse. TOY GUN. Courtesy of Keenan Gray at https://instagram.com/thiskeenan.