Quick Synopsis: Two friends need food to counteract the drugs they’ve just taken. All they need to do is get downstairs.

Sometimes you see a synopsis and the only thought in your head is “Wait, doesn’t that movie already exist?” Usually it’s because a movie is incredibly popular, so studios rush to release something similar. With that in mind, it’s hard to read the plot for this and not think “wait, isn’t that basically 2004’s Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle/Get The Munchies?” It’s an easy comparison to make. Two friends take drugs and try to find food. One of them is a nervous guy working up the courage to talk to a woman, the other being more impulsive, encouraging adventures and drug-taking. I thought that too; that was actually the first line I wrote in my notes while watching it.

But then the film revealed itself, and it’s more than the comparisons would suggest. For one thing, the female characters have more agency. They’re no longer just prizes or props; they’re fully formed characters with their own flaws and weirdness. The main characters have more depth too. Unlike Harold and Kumar, whose defining trait is essentially “they smoke weed”, Jack and Montgomery feel like people who happen to take drugs rather than characters entirely built around them.

Sadly, adept character writing doesn’t always make a good film. The drug trips themselves are superb: imaginative, creative, and a lot of fun. By comparison, the bits between them aren’t quite as good. There are also a few moments where it seems to suggest the drugs are not just affecting the characters, but are changing reality itself, with time loops, levitation, etc. There’s a cute moment at the end where we see the hallucination from an outsider’s perspective: the characters believe they’ve formed into Juan giant person (not a typo, an in-movie joke). From their point of view, they’re seamlessly moving as one person. From the viewpoint of others, it’s just the three characters tightly hugging each other and struggling to move. That’s fun. But then you have the time loop sequence, where there’s no obvious real-world explanation. Are bystanders genuinely watching these people scream, run back down a corridor, and repeat the process? If so, why does nobody react?

That being said, the time loop section is one of my favourite parts, so it’s not really a criticism. It’s more of a warning that to enjoy this film there’s a lot of “don’t think about it too hard, just go with it”. It’s not just the story, the comedy is like that too. The jokes don’t come quite as thick and fast as they do in something like Fackham Hall or The Naked Gun, but there’s certainly a variety. Some are quite smart, some are among the dumbest things you’ll see all week (even if you watch the trailer for the new Minions movie), and some exist purely because some guy thought “wouldn’t it be funny if….”

The willingness to embrace absurdity helps sell some of the weirder concepts. How many other films would have the villain be defeated by overdosing on drugs and realising they’re part of a low-budget indie movie? Or feature one of the writers joking that “my granddad wants to be in this movie”, only for a suspiciously elderly student to appear a few minutes later, played with deliberately amateurish enthusiasm? For such a gloriously stupid film, it’s surprisingly smart.

The visuals, however, are merely fine. A premise like this should give its directors licence to get truly weird, to push the visuals as far as their imagination will allow. Instead, everything feels rather restrained. There’s nothing wrong with how the film looks, but it rarely feels ambitious. The modest budget undoubtedly imposed limitations, yet there’s little here to suggest what these filmmakers might paint with a larger canvas.

The performances? They’re fine. Gaten Matarazzo does just enough to distinguish himself from his Stranger Things character. Sean Giambrone is slightly closer to his television role (Adam in The Goldbergs), but that’s more due to writing than performance. The two share a chemistry that makes you believe they’re actually friends. On the downside, the two are so good together that the traditional third-act split doesn’t land because you don’t truly believe these two would drift apart so easily. Lulu Wilson is the third part of the friendship group, and if there’s a third Ready Or Not movie, she wouldn’t be the worst choice as another relative to Kathryn Newton and Samara Weaving (she’d actually be the second best choice, first being Margot Robbie, obviously). Peyton Elizabeth Lee also leaves a strong impression despite limited material, and I’d happily watch her in a larger role.

The standout, though, is Sarah Sherman. She barely appears, yet completely owns every scene she’s in. She’s wonderfully odd, but never in a way that feels forced or performative. Instead, she gives the impression of someone who would happily spend an evening sitting alone in a dark room doing weird things regardless of whether anyone else was watching. It’s a fascinating performance, and one that makes me even more excited for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is rapidly becoming one of my most anticipated films of the year.

This won’t finish near the top of anyone’s Best Films of the Year list. But it’s well worth seeking out. It starts off looking like a Harold & Kumar clone (Harold and Two-mar?) before carving out its own identity through inventive ideas, likeable characters and an appealing willingness to embrace utter nonsense. At the very least, it’s funny, imaginative, and exactly the kind of film you’d have rented from a video shop back in the day, then ended up watching two or three times over the same weekend.