We’ve all had a terrible roommate and Alan at Night, which just screened at The Chattanooga Film Festival is a fun play on that twenty-something cinematic trope. The film pairs that premise with some intriguing commentary on our chronically online society, delivering a film with more laughs and a bit more bite than expected. The feature length debut by writer/director Jesse Swenson follows Jason Connelly aka Jay, a trust fund man-child and one half of a very unfunny podcasting/prankster duo, who gets more than he bargained for when he puts his spacious Brooklyn bedroom up for rent. The film is told from the POV of an episode of the duo’s video podcast uploaded to a rotten.com-esque website GrosseryStore.org.
While Jason appears to be the better behaved half of the duo, his partner in crime Camillo (Jorge Felipe Guevara) begins to antagonize his new roomie Alan who has a habit of snoring a bit too loud at night. Given his love of clip farming, Jay always has his camera at the ready and begins to film Alan without his consent for his channel. It’s something that only his girlfriend flags as objectionable or exploitative, as the pair get some serious traffic on a video of Alan mysteriously sleepwalking. It’s an eccentric mystery that’s compounded when Alan regails the pair with how he fell in a cave only to wake up with a giant gash on his spinal column.
I mean we know Alan might have something odd going on, but instead of showing any real empathy or concern the pair instead opt to post cameras around the house to document whatever is going on to post online. I think this dark comedic thread along with the horror elements work really well together as the pair of social media wannabes show just how far they are willing to push Alan for the possibility of internet clout. It’s something that definitely gives the premise something more to say as these hipsters eventually go too far. Alan at Night is a hilarious watch not just because of how relatable and intriguing the premise is, but how the cast here do their best as sort of emulating those terrible people on social media who fuck around and promptly find out.
