Olly Blackburn’s sexy thriller Donkey Punch premiered at Sundance earlier this year, and we caught it as part of Fantastic Fest, where it was paired with a “Hipsters Overboard!” Donkey Punch Boat Party on Town Lake in Austin, which sadly did not involve the actually tossing overboard of any hipsters. Austin has tight jean, rakish-angle hat-wearing party rats coming out of the woodwork, and it probably would have been a benefit if some had slipped into the dark water, never to be seen again.
The film is what you would get if you mashed Dead Calm and Open Water 2 together and sprinkled it liberally with heavy doses of ecstasy and trance club music. I know that it probably doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in a review when you reference Open Water 2: Adrift in the second paragraph, but that film should have had a title of its own and not been a sequel, because it’s not a bad Saturday afternoon thriller itself. Plus, it also involves a gaggle of young hipsters who shouldn’t be out on a luxury yacht.