“$Positions”

Writer and director Brandon Daley‘s “$POSITIONS” is a twitchy, hyper-contemporary anxiety comedy about a Midwestern worker whose attempt to escape poverty through crypto speculation spirals into a full-blown addiction, unraveling his relationships and his sense of reality along the way.

Blending dark humor with dread, the film follows Mike Alvarado (Michael Kunicki), a blue-collar everyman who bets his family’s savings on cryptocurrency and briefly finds himself riding high after quitting his job, opening up his relationship, and stepping into a version of success that feels too good to last.

But as his luck turns, so does everything else. What begins as a desperate financial gamble grows into compulsive, self-destructive behavior that strains his bond with his girlfriend, his developmentally disabled brother Vinny (Vinny Kress), and his recovering addict cousin, all while exposing the fragile scaffolding holding his life together. The result is a jittery descent into panic, shame, and escalating bad decisions, where the promise of a better future eventually curdles.

Echoing the gutsy intensity of indie class-conscious dramas, “$POSITIONS” plays like a stressful (and more authentic) version of the modern American Dream, a reality that’s less about actually getting rich than about what it costs to keep trying. It’s a film steeped in addiction, generational trauma, and economic desperation, capturing the absurd extremes people reach for when stability feels permanently out of reach.

Both darkly funny and deeply uncomfortable, it turns the volatility of crypto into a metaphor for emotional and financial collapse, leaving you somewhere between laughter and secondhand anxiety.

By: Louisa Moore