The Coffee Table (2024) by Caye Cases


Director: Caye Cases
Year: 2024
Country: Spain
Alternate Titles: La mesita del comedor
Genre: Psychological Thriller

Plot:
Desperate to stop fighting, a man decides to take a specific coffee table home to be a centerpiece in their apartment, but when a shocking tragedy occurs involving the coffee table affects his family he finds the tension trying to keep it a secret slowly unraveling his life and his sanity.

Review:

This was a highly disappointing and underwhelming genre effort. What works the best here is the unfurling sense of chaos that emerges once the initial setup takes place and lays out in front of everyone. The rightfully traumatizing accident that takes place is such a central segment here that there’s no real chance to take it all in is the unquestioned highlight, never going for the gratuitous but being enough of an inciting incident to get things moving. That allows the central race to keep it hidden to taking over the film and his resulting paranoia in how everything will come undone for him once the incident is spilled out into the open keeping everything incredibly tense with the perceived revelation taking on far more impact with situational awareness.

Beyond that, though, this one just ends up feeling disappointing. Once we’ve gotten past this initial incident, there’s just nothing much that happens to keep the film interesting beyond the idea of how everything will unravel for him and when that's the case here it just becomes insanely dull trying to keep the film going along. This one feels much more suited to a short film concept as it requires so much excess to try to keep it moving along that there’s just so little to keep this interesting at this length where it all gets downgraded by the bizarre attempt at comedy on something that should be a tragedy. This makes for a wholly disjointed setup where it’s dull and boring with a highly disjointed tone with a flimsy plot that doesn’t justify its length.


Overview: */5
A shocking initial premise and not much else, this is a pretty bland and boring effort that once you get past the traumatic starting incident might not have enough to keep them invested. Those who are more interested in the presentation utilized here or don't mind the flaws of this one while most others out there should look into what's going on first before taking a shot with this one.

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