The premise holds the possibility of great fun — desperate for success, a struggling actor kidnaps members of the public and
forces them to perform in a bizarre movie intended to make him a household
name — but the trailer for The Garth Method doesn’t do a particularly good job of selling director Gregory Pakis’ film, which is an Australian mockumentary allegedly based on a true story.

The story posits that in 2001, unemployed actor Garth Petridis was imprisoned for
one of the most unusual crimes in Australian history, described above. Shot on Super 16mm and starring the writer-director, Pakis’ movie is a combination of Petridis’ “real” video diaries leading up to his decision to commit his strange crime and a recreation of his comic struggle to become an actor. Some zippy music and Pakis’ eerie similarity to Tim Roth notwithstanding, there’s no cleanly, deeply carved comedic throughline here; it’s a shrug that doesn’t deliver on the movie’s concept. Still, I like to think of this character as the Down Under equivalent of Dennis Woodruff. Los Angelenos know what I’m talking about…