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“Harpoon” This title represents both a target and an action, a promise of thrill and an act of treachery. It also embodies a recurring joke in writer and director Rob Grant’s pitch-black film, as the weapon in question during the film’s ill-fated yacht trip is actually a spear gun and not a harpoon at all.
That kind of witty false advertising is characteristic of Grant’s way of thinking throughout the film. You may think you can predict the players, the hierarchy, their relationships, as well as their objectives. But the longer Grant keeps his characters trapped on the high seas, the more ways he finds to play with that space, and the more he keeps the audience guessing.
At the start of “Harpoon” we meet Sasha (Emily Tyra), Jonah, and Richard’s backstory, who are the three main characters in the movie. Richard (Christopher Gray) is a wealthy spoiled brat, while Jonah (Munro Chambers) is a typical, unattractive sad individual from a middle-class family. Jonah is in the process of clearing out his parents’ home after they died and now he lives in a house with Richard, who is madly driving towards his place. Jonah starts off as a meek nerd. Richard is attractive and believes that he is entitled to have everything he desires, including Jonah’s girlfriend Sasha, who is a beautifully sophisticated mother figure to him as well as Richard’s girlfriend. She is intricately intertwined between being an inconvenient element and a diplomat. They are all enmeshed in this web of dysfunctional relationships, as a result of their positioning within the triangle, but it’s about to change.
Aboard Richard’s boat, the trio plans to scatter Jonah’s parents’ remains and celebrate Richard’s birthday by using the gift Jonah and Sasha purchased him, dubbed “Chekhov’s Spear Gun”. While the ideal day slowly rolls on, with the sun shining, the boat is completely separated from other vessels, and a gentle breeze adds to the overall magic of the scenery, it all goes south when everything starts going wrong. With so many days now gone, the likelihood of rescue doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. The tensions feel more and more tangible as fists are ready to swing and rebellion is in the air. Secrets come out, resenting thoughts rise, and everything starts to bubble and reach boiling point.
As the sea grows ever more desperate, the tone shifts from darkly comical to just downright grim. He begins, almost bewildered, with Brett Gelman’s narration, where he mockingly criticizes the meaning of friendship and meta-references the chapter titles of the film. But the sly sense of fun that marks the movie’s start gives way to paranoia and blood until “Harpoon” ultimately turns into a full-fledged slasher. Some sequences are so exquisitely nasty that there will be a need to watch them through split fingers, but then they’re surrounded by dark comedy to ease the pressure.
In this compact space, the three actors have ample opportunities to interpret their characters’ constantly changing selves. We believe we understand these people hell, they believe they understand themselves and each other only until they uncover their real motivations. Chambers, Gray and Tyra do much with little this is, after all, a film of a play, on a boat. But all the actors get to experience huge arcs within a constrained space. Gray can be bening, his attractive face contorting into ugly urges. Chambers is increasingly shocking in his reveal of Jonah’s desperation, as he becomes ever more cunning and terrifying. And Tyra capably manages the difficulty of providing reason and sanity while Sasha’s own shocking transgressions are exposed.
You may notice “Harpoon” doesn’t have much to offer as it drifts off into the horizon, and that’s perfectly fine. This is one of those films where the journey is the destination.
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