Months after a one-night-stand-gone-nowhere with his sexy coworker Danielle, sad-sack Boston scientist Paul still finds himself increasingly consumed with obsessive thoughts toward his clearly uninterested colleague. Paul nurtures his fantasies with the occasional polite exchange at work, believing Danielle will eventually come around, but when Danielle seems receptive to the advances of another lab worker, Paul’s barely contained delusions and long-repressed impulses threaten to bubble over. Is Paul just a jilted loser, or is there something more dangerous lurking beneath the surface of his scarred psyche?
Indie auteur Alex Karpovsky directs and stars in this slow-burn psychosexual character study, taking on the thriller genre with his signature intimate scope and personal voice. Through deft direction and a performance that is equally moving and unsettling, Karpovsky infuses a familiar character and story with realism and dimensionality, to harrowing effect. An exercise in tension, mood, and understated suspense, Rubberneck demonstrates uncommon restraint and naturalism in its approach to this tale of desire, infatuation, and repression, making for a chillingly believable real-world thriller. –Cara Cusumano
Alex Karpovsky studied visual ethnography at Oxford University before wasting the next few years of his life trying to become the next Andy Kaufman. He now acts and makes movies. Alex’s award-winning debut feature, THE HOLE STORY, earned him a slot in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 new faces of independent film and a plastic key to a small city in Northern Minnesota. His subsequent two films (WOODPECKER & TRUST US, THIS IS ALL MADE UP) premiered at SXSW and have lassoed in several fiberglass trophies, polyester ribbons and miscellaneous ceramics. As an actor, Alex has had leading roles in feature-length films that have shown at the Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Los Angeles, and SXSW film festivals. He is also the voice of numerous Russian gangsters in Grand Theft Auto IV. Alex delights in moonscapes, balloons, taking walks (solo), pistachios and playing basketball with urban teenagers. —Alexkarpovsky.com
A scientist's jealously drives him to extreme measures in this paranoid thriller directed, written by, and starring GIRLS' Alex Karpovsky. Occasionally effective, if a bit self conscious. Hints of a VERTIGO-like descent into madness never quite come together. Feels like an idea for a film that never fully developed.
“Maybe it’s the lab coats that make this oft-told tale seem new and newly creepy.”