The Coffee Table

A bickering new-parent couple buy a gaudy glass coffee table against the husband's wishes. Within the first twenty minutes, a catastrophe occurs that the film will not let anyone escape for the rest of its runtime.

Caye Casas made a truly unbearable black comedy of dread: the event happens early, the wife does not yet know, and the entire film is the husband trying to hold an ordinary afternoon together while carrying it, with guests arriving and the truth one room away.

It is a single-location suspense piece built on the audience knowing what the characters do not, and the tension is close to intolerable.

Nothing is shown. The horror is entirely anticipation and the ordinary conversations happening on top of it.

It is one of the most stressful films on this site and a genuine feat of sustained dread. Approach with care.