NEW ENGLAND FOCUS
At 29, Phil is a little old to be still hanging out at high school parties in his hometown—but Phil’s not known for making smart choices. He spends his time off from a dead-end job getting wasted, selling steroids to the high school football team, and chasing underage girls. Phil wants to show his best friend, recently home from Iraq, a good time, and he wants to show up his teenage girlfriend’s football-star ex-boyfriend. Things start to look up when he reconnects with a former girlfriend and starts looking into owning a small business. But the bad decisions he has already made are catching up with him, and a series of bizarre incidents threaten his plans.
Shot entirely in Massachusetts with local actors—including newcomer Brian Hasenfus, whose turn as Phil won the Special Jury Prize for Individual Performance at South by Southwest—PHILLIP THE FOSSIL has a natural, low-key style that is echoed in its camerawork and masks a seething, underlying theme of isolation and anger. This is a tale of masculinity in crisis; the imperatives to be stronger, more in control, and more aggressive lead to dangerous games of one-upmanship and misdirected violence. As the central figure, Phillip shows glimpses of caring and even maturity beneath his crass exterior, but his self-destructive tendencies are all that’s been given room to grow within the limits of small-town life.
—Kristina Aikens
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