Rating: NR | Runtime: 90 minutes
Director(s): Onur Tukel
Writer(s): Onur Tukel

No one feels sympathy for them.

The best part of provocateur Onur Tukel’s latest film Poundcake is that he makes sure the cis white men falling victim to the titular serial killer are “beyond reproach” (until the body count starts piling up and the assholes get lumped in as collateral damage). One of them even stopped watching Louis CK because of #MeToo … and he loved Louis CK. If that’s not an ally, I don’t know what is.

I jest. So does Tukel. And his jokes are just as dumb because that’s part of the charm. Anyone familiar with the filmmaker’s career knows his dialogue-heavy, quasi-political debates are generally absurd, but they’re also entertaining due to that silliness being born out of the characters. We laugh at them because they really are idiots. Pompous. Ignorant. Oblivious. They talk a big game only to be put in their place … if they don’t double-down and put themselves there first.

Poundcake is chock full of taboo. Not because its gimp mask-wearing, chain-wielding murderer is sodomizing white men to death, but because the rest of the world either ignores it or laughs. Why? Because they aren’t perfect either. A Black family confronts homophobia. A heterosexual couple questions notions of “normalcy.” A Filipino woman calls everyone out for racism without admitting her own. Comedians discover their complicity to minimizing hate speech. Etc. Etc.

Despite its desire to shock, however, it mostly earns a wry smile. Many of its themes inevitably get confused before the end too—an issue exacerbated by how overt Tukel is at bludgeoning us over the head with them before slipping up. But it is funny. And while most laughs result from the sheer stupidity of the premise, that’s intentional. The point gets made and truths get reinforced. No one is going to learn anything from it, but they’ll surely nod their heads in agreement while telling themselves, “See, I am a good one.”

Viewed while I was a member of the Domestic Narrative Jury at the 2023 Buffalo International Film Festival.

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Sean Mejia and Frantzdy Alexandre in POUNDCAKE; courtesy of BIFF.