The Wave (2019)

Frank (Justin Long) is an attorney for an insurance company, who just discovered a way the company can escape paying on a huge policy to a family where the father and husband died of an illness. He initially declines his friend Jeff's (Donald Faison) suggestion they party to celebrate - a disagreement about whether it's Tuesday or Booze-day - but after surveying the listless existence he inhabits while walking his wife's froo-froo dog in the middle of the night, he hits the bar.

One thing leads to another, he meets a girl, takes a drug from some weird guy and wakes up the next morning alone in that house, minus his wallet and late for the presentation with the boss about his big finding. Makes it to work, and while the presentation is a hit, he finds his grip on reality slipping. People become monstrous, words are distorted, random people keep telling him it's his 'big day.'

So Frank, with Jeff's help, is trying to find, in some order, his wallet, the girl, and the guy who gave him the drugs. He keeps losing time, ending up in places with no memory of how he got there. He finds the girl, but only in some dreamlike space. He finds the drug dealer, but only at a point before he met him. It's a movie where characters talk about the universe desiring harmony. I feel like, unless you count the end state of entropy as harmony, that is not what the universe is seeking, but whatever.

Frank threw things off pursuing something he convinced himself he wants because he's supposed to want it, and he has to balance that. The movie presents an apparent solution late in the film, then neatly cuts it off, only to provide an, arguably more satisfying, solution after that.

The focus sticks with Long as he scrambles around like a hamster being chased through a maze. He grows increasingly battered and erratic as he can't find a way out of the situation. Even when he finds a way to keep two friends from being killed by a different irate drug dealer, it's less that he's had an epiphany than he flailed his way into success. And they were in danger because of him. He couldn't accept his wallet was gone and just cancel the credit card. Couldn't accept he was having a bad trip and just go to a hospital or something. Everything has to get fixed right now, and he drags other people along in his wake, nearly smashing them against the reefs.