Grind

“You know, perhaps man is the real monster,” film directors used to say. Today it’s a little different. They can be shy about it, but nevertheless I hear it again and again: “Of course, the real monster is capitalism.”

Given that sentiment, why not address the matter directly? That’s what directors Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant and Chelsea Stardust have done in this deftly crafted anthology about the gig economy. You’d never guess that there were three of them given how seamlessly their styles blend together. We move from one subject and set of characters to another, but the pacing, energy, horror and humour are perfectly in key, and the whole is a perfect delight.

Grind premièred at South by Southwest in March and more recently screened as part of Frightfest. It has four segments: MLM, Delivery, Content Moderation and Union Meeting, each one leading into the next, within a framing narrative which will eventually take us into the home of the owners of overarching corporation DRGN (played with gusto by Barbara Crampton and Rob Huebel).

In MLM, Sarah (Jessica Van) hopes to build herself a better future by buying into online sales franchise LaLa Leggings, but fails to read the fine print, and finds that when she misses her quotas, bad things start to happen. To begin with they’re absurd; pretty soon they’re life-threatening. Can next-level manager Molly (Courtney Pauroso) find a way to help her?

From there we go on to Delivery, following bright-eyed young optimist Benny (Vinny Thomas), who endures unreasonable demands, delays and means customer comments because he genuinely believes that commitment to quality of service matters. late one night, however, an increasingly peculiar request traps him in a situation which might be too much even for his ingenuity.

The third and darkest segment is Content Moderation, in which ambitious coder Joel (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette) thinks he has scored his dream job, complete with the kind of ridiculous perks which used to be advertised in the early days of Facebook and Google, only to find that he must first work through a probationary period dealing with the worst of what the internet has to offer down in ‘the pit’. It’s not the actual worst, of course, because that couldn’t be shown in a film like this, but we get the point, and we see something of the psychological damage it does. Impressively, this still manages to be funny, even as fate conspires to make escape seem impossible.

Finally, there’s Union Meeting, in which a group of aggrieved workers at Neptunia Coffee conspire after hours to do what is forbidden and organise their labour. What can the company do about it? they wonder. They haven’t been paying attention. Still, what ensues is unlikely to be what you expect.

Flawless production, a slick style and lots of bright colours keep Grind congruent with the style of the world it has set out to criticise. It the process it sends the clear message that any of the creative talents involved here could play that game successfully if they wanted to, but they choose to do something with a different mind of value. Taken together, the stories present a world at which one might easily despair, but they’re witty enough and absurd enough to work as light entertainment. Still, the final moment feels very well deserved. We can but hope.

Reviewed on: 29 Aug 2026