New Guy

I had no idea what to expect when I put this movie into the DVD player. A friend of mine had recommended it to me because I really love Scorsese's "After Hours" and she said this had a similar weird one night in hell vibe to it. Boy was she right.

The movie starts off very simple yet strange with the new guy arriving in the bathroom and stepping into the stall that everybody who works there knows not to step into. Then it just gets harder and harder for him to fit in. His co-workers are strange, one minute they're like trying to be best friends with him, the next minute it's like he never existed. It's kind of like high school, come to think of it.

The director must have spent a lot of time in an office because all of the details of office life are right, from the guy who's always faxing, to the creepy stains on the walls that you're always wondering where they came from, to the boss who lets his son run wild around the office. I think this movie was made before "The Office" TV series and all those TV commercials that satirize office life.

And then, the movie goes from weird hilarious to weird creepy and finally weird weird. A lot of people have said they don't "get" the ending, but I think that is part of the point. I think it was meant to be ambiguous and uncertain. I like the fact that there were no easy resolutions or explanations. I look forward to seeing what this director does next.

Watched this a while back just after release and highly enjoyed it. It has a subtle build up that something's amiss and then piles it on. I've watched a heck of a lot of movies and this is one them that every so often I go back too. Got the dvd and hope maybe one day it will get a hd airing. You gotta dream. Anyhow sweet movie.

The plot is contrived, completely unrealistic, yet without any discernible symbolism which may redeem, or justify such story telling. If some hidden allegory was the writer's intent it certainly escaped me in total.

The story takes place on the first day on the job for Gregg, a young office worker. Right from the start it presents situations that I have never witnessed in my 30+ years of work in an office environment. How does he walk directly to his cubicle in the new place without having been shown to it by anyone in the office is just the first of many events that are left without an explanation, but is typical of the general unsatisfying flavor of the plot.

It is as if the plot was assembled on the go and it encountered many twists and blind alleys from which it could not recover and so it just moved on with no closure.

Ultimately, it ends (alas, not soon enough) enigmatically in another contrived plot twist still without providing a clue to the meaning of the earlier hour-and-a-half of nonsense.

A complete waste of time.

I have had a chance to view this dark comedy (I'm not sure the horror classification is entirely accurate, but...) several times now. Bilge Ebiri, a fellow Turkish-American, shows an appreciation for films of many genres. One can see the influences of Kubrick, Capra (yes, I said Capra), Hitchcock, Wilder, DePalma, and the Coen Bros., yet the film is strikingly original. The title character is caught up in a nightmare of office politics, where an annoying toy car and Post-It notes become deeper symbols of his social oppression which indeed follows him home from work. This is illustrated quite well in a scene where the title character is caught between two attractive women as they talk about the difficulties of having sex in New York. The scene is made funny by the fact that both of them are completely oblivious to him despite his physical promixity. Thus, he is a man who is ignored by women and ostrechized by men. He seemingly can not win, but like most tragic heroes, he is determined not to lose. The film's digital shoot gives it an intimate quality and the tight spaces makes us feel for the title's character's inherent suffocation. As a former newspaper reporter, I could certainly relate to this film and it reminds me of the lyrics to that old Nick Lowe song "Cruel to be Kind." "New Guy" is an intriguing, subversive look at the 9-to-5 hell that is the modern workplace.

I saw this film about a week ago in the East Village (NY) and have to say I was very impressed. The story was a good one, and it was filmed and put together very nicely. Though truth be told, I don't know how impressed I would have been if not for the performance of Kelly Miller as Gregg. He was truly superb, ranging from absolutely hysterical, to desperately intense. The other actors were fine, they did their job - but Kelly Miller was a true find. Well done! I sort of wanted to end my review, but they want me to write a few more lines, so... My understanding is that the budget was very low, so the filmmakers should be extremely proud of what they were able to do. The end product was a great looking film.