‘A Grand Mockery’ Movie Review [Fantasia 2025]: Surrealism Gone Terribly Wrong

Photo from Fantasia Film Festival

From Jeff Nelson

Some movies get a little too high on their own supply. Cinema should be made for the artist, but that also means taking the risk that it won’t connect with audiences. Writer/director duo Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon’s A Grand Mockery is an experimental drama that draws surrealist inspiration from the likes of David Lynch’s Inland Empire. Unfortunately, it fails to entertain, provoke, or even stimulate.

A local Aussie named Josie (Dixon) lives a mundane life working at a movie theater. His tedious existence drives him to a mental health break that sends him into a fog. He’s propelled through the haunting liminal spaces of Brisbane’s underbelly, forced to repeat a frustrating daily routine. He cleans chairs, endures filthy customers, and fields demands from awkward guests who insist on a beer after closing hours. Josie attempts to make his work sound wilder than it is, referring to teenagers using the theater as a hookup spot. But even he doesn’t believe these exaggerations.

Briggs and Dixon’s gritty dark comedy feels like watching through a peephole into a parallel dimension. There are no genuine human interactions, including awkward pauses and “word diarrhea” that sounds like alien lifeforms attempting to communicate. It’s more grating than funny.

Then, the tone grows darker as Josie spirals deeper into the void. He wanders through familiar spaces, haunted by a potent sense of deja vu. Now removed from reality, he’s far less willing to play according to social norms. Josie’s addictive personality and depression take on a physical form, morphing his entire being into something unrecognizable. Briggs and Dixon rely on shock value in the delirious third act, where various bodily fluids flood the frame.

There isn’t much of a plot to speak of, but there’s enough style to spare. Shot in 8mm, Briggs and Dixon’s film drags the underground filmmaking from yesteryear into the modern day. Their ability to transform casual spaces into unnerving ones is a strength, but it requires an iron will to push through the self-indulgent noise.

A Grand Mockery is exactly that: An experimental farce that only works in its examination of mundanity, devolving into absolute nonsense when it plunges into surrealism. Briggs and Dixon have talent as visual storytellers, but this is an excruciating endurance test of a film.

Rating: 1/5

A Grand Mockery played at Fantasia 2025 on July 25th.

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