Walking into The Fox at SXSW, knowing it came from Dario Russo, co-creator of Danger 5, immediately put me on high alert. That show thrives on weaponized absurdity, and I was curious how that sensibility would translate into a feature. The answer is that it translates beautifully, maybe not perfectly, but in a way that feels deeply committed, wildly strange, and genuinely funny.
The film opens with a voiceover that makes you think you are about to watch a nature documentary. That mood is immediately undercut as we follow Nick, played by Jai Courtney, strutting out of a bar and collecting his dog before heading off into the night. This tonal swerve sets the table early. The Fox wants you off balance. It wants you to be unsure whether to laugh, cringe, or ask why there is suddenly a dead fox on screen, cut together with b-roll of horses and other animals.
Nick’s life is already a mess before the film really gets going. He picks up Kori, his girlfriend, played by Emily Browning, from what appears to be the same bar he was drinking at earlier, and takes her to dinner. Out of nowhere, he proposes. The moment stretches into prolonged, painful awkwardness. Nick stares straight through her as the bar waits with him. She eventually says yes, but it lands with the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to help you move, not marry you.
From there, the movie just keeps escalating into increasingly uncomfortable, absurd territory. There is a sex scene that cuts immediately to Nick in the bathroom aggressively washing his dick, and it is one of the hardest laughs of the night. Russo has a gift for punctuating intimacy with humiliation, and it works because the film never pretends Nick is anything other than a deeply dull but somehow lovable man.
That balance is really where Jai Courtney shines here. This is genuinely one of his best performances. Nick is a simple guy whose emotional intelligence starts and ends with fixing problems the stupidest way possible, and Courtney plays him with total commitment. He lets Nick be pathetic without ever making him unwatchable.
Then there’s the fox itself, voiced by Olivia Colman. Yes, that Olivia Colman. Somehow, the talking fox works. Even more impressively, the animatronic fox works. The fox delivers strange moral lectures and sideways metaphors about animals, hunting, and hierarchy, like a drunk philosopher who wandered out of the bush. The walking metaphors are weird and half-baked, but that feels intentional. This movie isn’t interested in clean allegory.
What I love most about The Fox is that everything you think is going to happen simply does not. The movie dodges the obvious beats again and again, and it is stronger for it. This is very much a “the less you know going in, the better” kind of film. Half the fun is not knowing how far it will go, or whether it will actually commit to its most unhinged ideas.
Tonally, the film is aggressively Australian. There are spiders crawling on statues. Everyone drinks. Everyone fights. Everyone has insane haircuts. The vibe is rural chaos with a thin layer of folklore smeared over it. There are also plenty of recognizably Australian acting veterans scattered throughout, some lending their voices, others appearing in small but memorable roles. If you are a Danger 5 fan, you will catch a fun cameo that feels like little winks rather than distractions.
Comedically, the movie absolutely lands. One moment in particular, that happened on the stairs, had me gasping for air. The kind of laugh where it takes a few seconds before sound even comes out. Russo knows exactly how long to hold a shot and when to cut away to make the joke hit harder.
Underneath all the chaos, the loose throughline is simple. We are all animals. We all have instincts. And no matter how much we pretend otherwise, we tend to fall back in line. Fox or not.
The third act does slow down a bit and drifts into something more mundane than the rest of the film, which is a slight disappointment given how wild everything before it is. I was hoping it would fully blow its own doors off. Instead, it chooses a clever, funny wrap-up that feels controlled rather than explosive. Still, the final frame is solid. Less insane than expected, but strange enough to leave you smiling.
If anything, I just wanted it to be even more absurd. And maybe that says more about me than the movie.
There is no grand hidden meaning here. No big message to decode. The Fox is about thrills, entertainment, and laughs. It is self-aware without being smug, ridiculous without being lazy. Think Edgar Wright energy filtered through Yorgos Lanthimos logic and then soaked in a Foster’s.
At SXSW, surrounded by premieres trying very hard to say something important, The Fox stood out by simply being funny, strange, and fully committed to the bit. And honestly, that feels kind of refreshing.
Jessie Hobson