Check the rules of this place [HBO Max]

Director: Andres Callaghan | Screenplay: Andres Callaghan | Time to play: 82 minutes | Year: 2022

Twenty-something Andrew Callaghan excels at documenting the American underbelly in gonzo style. His trailer was produced with the All Gas No Brakes YouTube channel and currently attracts millions of viewers with Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan. The strength of his style remains largely intact in rules of this place. This documentary shows his journey across the United States in late 2020 before the Capitol takeover on January 6, 2021. But Callaghan looks back with far too much distance and contemplation at what he experienced, which counteracts the immersion in what he experienced. what happened.

Sitting in a director’s chair, he talks things through like a correspondent for The New Yorker. In everyday journalistic style, he recounts how charlatans like Alex Jones toyed with his audience during and after the 2020 US presidential election, when the pandemic also sparked political strife. The crew’s presence at all the major parades creates a piercing picture of just how many were flogged. That happened outside of the usual social media channels, because all the troublemakers had already been dumped there.

The fallout is more chilling when Callaghan comes across a family that is under the spell of QAnon. One moment he’s playing nice with the kids, the next moment one of them is blindly repeating the weirdest conspiracy theories. When someone else says that he misses his friends now that their parents keep them home so they don’t have to wear a mask to school, he’s surprised. The moment best demonstrates Callaghan’s gift for opening people up.

Even when he clearly expresses his own opinion, he respects others and acts as something of an informant when he shoves the microphone under someone’s nose. One then shows his belly unashamed of him, as a man dressed as a druid who can’t stop talking about the evil of male circumcision in a protest against the election results. But quite often, lucid insights also come from the most unexpected places. For example, a tattooed figure like The Joker, complete with an unintelligible Florida accent, provides a hilarious explanation of what all the charlatans are up to.

Just like on YouTube, absurd situations are in rules of this place provided with abrupt transitions to surprised reactions, but nevertheless Callaghan’s respect for the interviewee remains intact. This openness puts him in touch with surprising figures who can be left with nothing without Callaghan getting involved with ‘both sides’ of the mainstream media. Crammed into a trailer, for example, a pedophilia-obsessed host presents conspiracy theories reminiscent of the protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fascist militia leader Enrique Tarrio can casually talk about how Antifa is the bogeyman (which later clearly contradicts interviews with anti-fascist protesters on the front lines).

Callaghan even interviews host Alex Jones, leading to bizarre scenes of them feeding each other whiskey and Jones’ trademark outbursts after Callaghan tries to confront him about his part in instigating the mugging. Shows at those times rules of this place a need for exposure, something less common in Callaghan’s YouTube work. There, her reports take center stage, such as a documentary about trap music that forcefully reveals social abuse in the United States. Understanding subcultures works more powerfully when Callaghan simply puts a microphone under his nose rather than trying to explain too much.

rules of this place can be seen on HBO Max.