I love movies that make you squirm. Not all of them — there are films that make you uncomfortable just for the hell of it and others that make you think about aspects of human nature for a long time afterward. E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills is definitely in the latter category. There were times when I had to look away or was chewing on my fingernails, but I loved every second of it. The movie follows the one-night descent of two friends who are roped into a series of escalating paid dares by a wealthy couple they meet in a bar. After family man Craig (Pat Healy, Compliance) loses his job and is about to be evicted, he runs into his old pal Vince (Ethan Embry, Empire Records) at a local dive. As the two drink their troubles away, they are lured by a couple celebrating a birthday (Anchorman and The Office’s David Koechner and The Innkeepers’ Sara Paxton), who shell out obscene wads of crash to Craig and Vince in exchange for taking on some seemingly harmless bets. As the party continues in a strip club and then in the couple’s home, the cash payoffs increase dramatically as the challenges become more and more outrageous. Drugs and laughter give way to firearms, felonies and self-destruction. By sunrise, Craig and Vince will learn exactly how far they’re willing to go for both big money and cheap thrills.
I admire all four of these actors and enjoyed sitting down with them in Los Angeles to discuss this hilarious, agonizing and entertaining film.
Danny Miller: Pat, I talked to you about Compliance last year and I felt a lot of parallels between that film, which I thought was great, and this one — except Compliance was painful creepy and this is fun creepy!
Pat Healy: Yeah, they basically explore the same terrain but that movie had no release valve and this one does — you can laugh, you can scream! Somebody just pointed out to me that my character has the same last name in both movies — I don’t know why I didn’t notice that! My character in Compliance was so tightly wound, physically and emotionally, and he hated humanity, but in this film I got to play both sides of this guy which was fun and cathartic.
Sara Paxton: God, Compliance wrecked me, it just destroyed me. I had white-hot rage when I watched that film — Pat was so good!
What I loved about this film is that as crazy as it is, the progression of dares seems totally plausible. I completely bought it, and was tortured every step of the way wondering what I would do in each situation.
Ethan Embry: You just can’t know. It’s easy to judge these guys, but depending on where you’re at — what if you were about to be evicted with your wife and baby and you know you have no money coming in next week?
Sara: I thought about that for a long time after I read the script. What would I do if I was in that kind of trouble and really needed money? I mean, do we really need our pinkies?
Pat: You use it for nothing!
David Koechner: Of course, Sara’s and my job in the picture was not to think about what we would do, but to figure out what it would take to get others to do such things. It was a different psychology for our characters.
David, you’re so great in this film, but I wondered if it ever bothers you that you are so often asked to play these guys who are so—
Cringe-inducing?
Yes! Do you enjoy playing that kind of guy more than some sweet, nice character?
I enjoy working! And if there’s more meat on the bone with such characters, that’s great!
And Sara, I was so interested in your character because at first she seems rather passive and you worry that her husband is forcing her into all this craziness. But then you realize that’s not the case at all!
Sara: No! She is every bit as creepy and dark and twisted! When I first read the script, I liked the parallels between David’s and Pat’s characters — they’re kind of both doing the same thing, if you think about it. Pat is desperate for the money because of how much he loves his wife, that’s why he’s doing this. And that’s why David is doing this as well — because he loves his wife and wants to make her happy!
I want to believe that there’s a certain line I would never cross. I know I would never kill anyone, no matter how much money I was offered.
Ethan: I don’t know, man. I was mugged in front of my house and my family was threatened and I retaliated by shooting the person.
Oh, but that’s completely different!
Yeah, but if my family was at risk and there was someone that I viewed to be a sore on humanity — it just depends on the situation.
Pat: We can sit and pontificate all we want, but the fact of the matter is we don’t know how we would respond. If you’re in that situation and you’re cut off from the rest of the world as people in combat are or anybody who’s in some kind of traumatic situation, you don’t know what you’d do. You do what you think is right based on the information that you have.
I never thought I’d see a scene in a movie where it seems noble when a man is cheating on his wife!
Sara: Wait…what?
David: No, I see that! He’s earning money that will get him out of debt and provide for his wife and baby!
Sara, how do you even begin to get inside the head of someone like your character?
Sara: Well, I don’t have a sliver of her in me at all, thank God! All I can do is create a back story for her — I have to figure out why she wants to have these guys do these things.
To be honest, I’m just glad that I’ll probably never meet some rich dude who offers me money to do crazy stuff.
Pat: Here’s the thing, though, and this goes back to Compliance, too, since you brought it up. A lot of people watched that movie and said, “I can’t believe how stupid those people were, I would NEVER do that!” and yet there were 70 recorded cases of it which means there were probably a lot more. In my opinion, it’s the people who are the first to say “That would never happen to me” who are probably the first ones who would do stuff like that.
Ethan: I think people can talk themselves into doing just about anything.
Probably. We do things all the time that we look back on later and say, “What the fuck were we thinking?” Even in marrying certain people!
Pat: Oh, I can testify to that! (Everyone laughs.) It’s funny because I actually think it is analogous! I look back at my situation and wonder what was going on because it made no sense that I would even like this person, much less marry them. And then I think, oh yeah, I was cut off from everyone and I was being manipulated! Believe me, I take my own responsibility for that, too, but one day out of that situation and I was thinking “What was I doing? Was I under some sort of trance?”
Yikes, do you want me to include that? I don’t want to get you in any trouble!
Oh, it’s fine, don’t worry about it!
This is the kind of movie that’s a little hard to talk about because I don’t want to give too much away — especially the ending which I didn’t see coming at all.
David: I don’t think any audiences do. We’ve seen it with festival crowds and it’s really great to see them punched in the diaphragm like that — it’s quite a reaction!
Pat, am I the only one who thought that for a good part of the movie, with the way that blood dried under your nose, that you looked just like Adolf Hitler?
David: You’re revealing a lot about yourself today!
Pat: Ha! I hadn’t heard that but that’s funny. That’s one of those things that’s completely unintentional but people will probably start talking about it like the way people see all this stuff in The Shining that wasn’t really there. But you know what? When I was a kid, I used to do this thing with my hair and a comb and I really looked like Hitler! I just told my girlfriend about that the other day and it really freaked her out.
Part of me thinks we should all go straight from this film to a therapy session.
David: That’s a brilliant marketing ploy! The distributor should announce that therapists will be provided after every screening!
I would sign up! And maybe the cast should, too. I have to admit, Pat, that I felt bad for that baby you were holding in that last scene when you looked pretty terrifying.
Pat: You think YOU felt bad!