Zane wants to follow. Margo stops him. “That’s not him,” she says. “Or maybe it is. But he doesn’t want to be found. And honestly? Neither do we.” They sit on the edge of the pipe as the sun sets. The camera pulls back slowly, revealing the vast, empty concrete landscape. They don’t cry. They don’t laugh. They just sit. Then Zane pulls out a joint. “DTPH?” he asks. Margo takes it. “Always,” she says. The screen cuts to black. Gouda is never mentioned again.
DTPH is not for everyone. In fact, it’s for almost no one. But for that small, scruffy audience—the ones who have woken up at 3 PM on a Tuesday with no texts, no plans, and no idea what day it is—this film is a mirror. It says: you are not alone in your pointless quest. And sometimes, that is enough. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear a dog barking somewhere. Or maybe it’s just the wind. DTPH? Rating: 4/5 broken vape pens. Streaming on: Basically nowhere, but check the usual pirate havens or DM @gouda_forever on Instagram. dtph movie
K. Rex, the director, gives a masterclass in . Long takes dominate the runtime. In one memorable sequence, Margo walks seven blocks to a convenience store to buy rolling papers. The camera follows her from behind, never cutting. We hear her breathing, her footsteps on cracked pavement, a distant argument in an apartment, a car playing reggaeton that fades in and out. Nothing “happens.” She buys the papers, walks back. The scene lasts eleven minutes. It should be boring. Instead, it is hypnotic, a meditation on movement and isolation. Zane wants to follow
Hayes’s Margo is the engine of the duo. Where Zane is passive, Margo is restlessly active. She picks fights with nothing, climbs fire escapes for no reason, and delivers a five-minute monologue about the time she tried to join a cult but was rejected for being “too skeptical.” Hayes brings a nervy, kinetic energy that prevents the film from sinking into total torpor. Together, they have the chemistry of two people who have seen each other at their absolute worst—hungover, crying, laughing at nothing—and have decided to stay anyway. Upon its very limited festival run (it was rejected from SXSW and Sundance, but played at the Portland Underground Film Festival and a basement in Bushwick), DTPH received polarized reactions. Variety called it “82 minutes of navel-gazing that mistakes inertia for insight.” Film Threat was more generous, dubbing it “a lo-fi masterpiece for the Xanax generation.” Audiences either walked out in confusion or stayed for multiple screenings, bringing their own blankets and pillows. “Or maybe it is
The dog, , functions as a silent, four-legged god. Is he real? There are hints that Gouda may be a shared hallucination, a tulpa created by Zane and Margo’s collective need for purpose. In one pivotal scene, they find a photograph of themselves from a week prior, and Gouda is not in it. They stare at the photo, then at the empty leash in Margo’s hand. No words are exchanged. The camera holds on their faces for a full minute as confusion gives way to a shrug, and they light another joint. This is the film’s thesis: in a world without objective meaning, the subjective search is the meaning.