Dark political comedy divides family

THE OATH

Grade: BTheatres, showtimes, pages 32-33

Just in time for U.S. Thanksgiving (and the U.S. midterm elections) comes this jet-black political comedy from first-time feature writer-director Ike Barinholtz. It’s Black Mirror meets Black Friday.

The premise is that U.S. citizens have been asked to sign a loyalty waiver, promising to be true to both the nation and the president.

Officially, there are no repercussions if they don’t sign the Patriot’s Oath, but there are tax breaks for those who do.

Chris and Kai (Barinholtz, Tiffany Haddish) play a liberal couple who shake their heads at this news and tell each other they’ll never sign. But as the Thanksgiving deadline approaches, protests and counter-protests grow, and a new offshoot of Homeland Security starts arresting troublemakers. You know things are bad when Seth Rogen gets pinched.

Barinholtz structures his film like one of those family-gathering-gone-wrong comedies.

Dad (Chris Ellis) can’t operate the TV; Mom (Nora Dunn) bores everyone with updates on forgotten acquaintances; and brother Pat (Jon Barinholtz) has a heedful of rightwing opinions that drive Chris crazy.

Also, Chris keeps forgetting the name of Pat’s new girlfriend (Meredith Hagner).

It’s clear from the set-up that we can expect a food fight at the very least, but things take a darker turn at the movie’s halfway point when government agents (John Cho, playing it cool, and Billy Magnussen, definitely not) show up at the door.

They say they just want to talk. Chris gets his back up.

The Oath is very much a movie of the moment; described as a dystopian future, it’s really more of a dystopian present. American tribalism is on display in the way the two brothers read about the same news event through different filters on their phones; Chris sees innocent civilians being shot, while Pat says they were breaking the law and threatening the peace.