Two friends go camping in a Michigan wood. Derek (writer/director Joel Potrykus) is packed with false bravado, and well equipped with hiking boots, rucksack, and other supplies. Marty (Josh Burge) is reluctant and sullen, and has not come equipped with anything. Derek demonstrates an enthusiasm for playing out: filming stunt videos, hitting trees with sticks, and setting off firecrackers. Marty does not seem enthusiastic for anything at all. For a good while it is a mystery why Potrykus seems so intent on making us watch two overgrown adolescents waste both their time and ours in the wilderness. Then, of course, the other shoe drops, and the audience is left to reevaluate everything they have seen so far.

Vulcanizadora is tremendous, and wildly unexpected. To say it undertakes a massive shift in plot and tone at its mid-point would be to undersell it. Instead it is that second film all along, but until the viewer sorts out enough of the narrative jigsaw pieces to work that out it effortlessly resembles something else. It smartly exploits our tendency to underrate and mock a certain segment of society – typified by two jobless, hopeless, immature males – and then turns that perception around to show just how damaging our own prejudices might be.

Potrykus plays an easily recognisable archetype as Derek, and he plays it well: so well, in fact, that within minutes the viewer is getting as irritated by him as Marty is. It is intentional. It is also well balanced against Josh Burge’s remarkable turn in the other role. He has tremendously expressive eyes, and communicates volumes of emotion to the audience in comparative silence. It is very likely one of the best on-screen performances I shall see this year. The two actors dominate the movie, and while the cast expands a little in the second half is it deliberately framed to exclude the new characters from closer view.

The film appears to have been shot coarsely in 16mm, and an off-kilter musical soundtracks runs the length from classical opera to heavy metal. It is edited in a jagged, unpredictable manner. Technically the whole piece seems dedicated to making the audience feel isolated and badly off-edge.

Further reading up on Joel Potrykus after the fact revealed that this is, in fact, a sequel. It returns to the characters of Derek and Marty a decade after their first appearance in Potrykus’ Buzzards. I have not seen the earlier film – in fact this is the first Joel Potrykus films I have seen at all – but Vulcanizadora works tremendously without it. You would not tell if you did not know, and this new film is far too arresting and effective to wait to catch up. This is a rough-hewn, deeply felt creative success.

Vulcanizadora screened at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival, and is screening at the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival. Click here for more information.