Nothing is a 2003 Canadian comedy film by Vincenzo Natali.
Dave and Andrew have been best friends for years, now living in Andrew's home beneath a freeway. Their house is due to be demolished when they both wish for everyone to "go away". The whole world outside inexplicably vanishes and is replaced by an endless white void.
This film provides examples of:
- The Aloner: The protagonists. Hordes of angry people are settling on their house, they are hiding in a room, crying and hugging... and suddenly everything apart from them and the house disappears, replaced by a big, white, surprisingly bouncy nothing.
- Blank White Void: The movie is mostly set in a white void.
- Girl Scouts Are Evil: The Girl Scout that helps Andrew when he locks himself out of his house tries to help ease his obvious anxiety; when he demands that she leaves on grounds of him being too awkward, she retaliates by accusing him of molesting her.
- Hikkikomori: Andrew is suffering from extreme social withdrawal, and won't leave the house that his parents left him. His best friend and roommmate David is apparently his only outlet to the world.
- Humiliation Conga: Ludicrously exaggerated in the film's setup to show just how bad Andrew and Dave have it in life. Dave is openly ridiculed by all of his coworkers and boss, his girlfriend never loved him and she goes as far as to embezzle over $27,000 from his company and blame him for it. As for Andrew, the one time he goes outside ends up getting him accused of child molestation.
- Insane Troll Logic: "Andrew, we can't be dead! We have cable!"
- Losing Your Head: Dave and Andrew eventually wish away everything around each other in an argument until they're both down to just their heads.
- Minimalistic Cover Art: The poster only features the two protagonists on a white background. And the said protagonists don't cover much space there. Besides the title, billing block and the company logos, that's pretty much it.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Andrew, who suffers from extreme agoraphobia, is visited by a girl scout, but gets so panicked that he grabs her arm and tells her to leave. He later gets a knock on the door from the girl's mother, who mistakenly believes that he forcibly kissed her. However, this is because she was trying extremely aggressively to sell him cookies, and after he made her leave, she made a deliberate false allegation against him that he molested her, as revenge for not buying her cookies.
- Nervous Wreck: Andrew has cripplingly severe anxiety as a result of his parents dying that prohibits him from comfortably leaving his home.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer
makes it out to be a psychological thriller/horror/sci-fi much in the same vein as Vincenzo Natali's earlier film Cube, when in actuality it is a lighthearted buddy comedy that is almost nothing like that. - The Power of Hate: If Andrew and Dave focus in on an object while in the void (often how much they dislike it), it disappears from existence. They weaponize this on each other in the climax.
- Reality Warper: Played with. The two protagonists eventually realize that they can change the featureless environment with their own thoughts, but they can only will things out of existence; they can't create anything new.
- Riddle for the Ages: Did the duo actually wish away everything into nonexistence, or are they stuck in a limbo where wishing things away actually wishes them back into reality?
- Serial Escalation: The film takes this to the very extreme as the two main characters gain the ability to wish the universe into nothingness, including themselves, leading to a finale where all that's left is the two characters' heads and a turtle on an infinite expanse of white light.
- The Shut-In: Andrew, which makes his decision to explore the nothing with Dave some considerable Character Development.
