Gullible novelist (John Magaro) and uptight interior designer Suzie (Britt Lower) share a strained relationship until a retired serial killer (Steve Buscemi) steps into their life as a marriage counselor.
A chaotic Coens-style comedy with stellar performances. Psycho Therapy pretty much sums up its premise in its particularly long title, ‘Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer.’ The writer, in this case, is John Magaro, who replaces his coyness from Past Lives with dorky man-child energy. And guiding him out of writer’s block and his marital rut is Steve Buscemi as a nonchalant serial killer, proving yet again why he is a character actor par excellence. The duo’s deadpan energy is brilliantly supported by Britt Lower, fresh off her success in Severance. As Magaro and Lower explore a dysfunctional marriage with Buscemi’s brooding presence, Psycho Therapy spirals into chaotic slapstick antics and chuckle-inducing one-liners.
The humor can be too cheekily absurdist, but the film still sticks the landing. Turkish writer-director Tolga Karaçelik doesn’t break new ground in the dark comedy subgenre. Perhaps you would have seen better Coen Brothers-style movies (many of which are by the Coens themselves, such as Burn After Reading or the Buscemi-led Fargo). But even though the narrative can have its rough edges, Psycho Therapy has enough weirdness to keep you hooked. Be it a llama walking in a bar among Albanian gun dealers or the procrastinating novelist pitching a “love story between a Homo sapien woman and a Neanderthal man in 4000 BC Slovenia”, Psycho Therapy sounds and feels like a wild fever dream. But with minimalist real-world production design, Karaçelik doesn’t try to stretch this absurdity beyond human imagination. Instead, he grounds his surrealist ideas within realistic loners with realistic problems. And given the well-cast trinity leading his film, he has something of a cutesy crime thriller-cum-romantic comedy in his hands.
Slapstick antics and cheeky weirdness adorn this comedy of errors.
