Indie filmmaker Will Link won't make any friends at USC with Hack, a searing and sometimes mean dissection of film school snobbery. Hack is a mockumentary, made Blair Witch style, tracing the creation of a "final project" by our harrowed subject Dennis (Phil Koerber). His movie, Asphyxiation, is intended as a paean to his brother's death while Dennis was a child (by auto-erotic asphyxiation). He worships Jim Jarmusch and refuses to compromise on "his art."

After recruiting a dozen fellow students to produce his film, mishap after mishap occurs, exacerbated by the fact that Dennis, as the movie's title suggests, is a talentless hack. The end product of Asphyxiation is so bad it's painful to watch, and as a film critic who receives countless indie film submissions to review from hopeful filmmakers, it is all too familiar and real.

If Hack had been made with more sophistication (read: Movies shot on videotape look like crap no matter what, people!), its biting humor might have come across a little more assuredly. As it stands, the movie is a solid and dryly funny look at that beast we all know as The Student Film, a little something that will earn Will Link his calling card in Hollywood... along with a stiff door-slam in the face.



Hacks at play.