There’s an unnerving stillness to director Rick Alverson’s work. It’s a quality akin to David Lynch’s most dreamlike films, where even the most mundane scenes have an air of creeping dread. To Alverson’s credit, he manages to instill that feeling in the most innocuous of stories. With 2012’s The Comedy, he built a weird, horror movie-like tension as he followed a slovenly, egotistical rich kid (Tim Heidecker) meandering around Brooklyn with his hipster buddies.
In Alverson’s Entertainment, that same discomfort lingers in the otherwise humdrum day-to-day existence of a struggling, visibly haunted stand-up (played by Gregg Turkington). We follow along as Turkington’s nameless comedian plies his trade at night, then spends his days baking in the Southern sun as he goes on guided tours or spends time with his strange cousin (John C. Reilly). Punctuating his days are phone calls to his estranged daughter—calls that go unanswered, and calls that grow more desperate.