Loafers (2026)
Made in 11 days and for $6,000, which is only an achievement if it doesn’t feel like it
Joe Swanberg’s first feature in a decade was the closing film of last week’s Chicago Critics Film Festival, but the night before we saw the Chicago premiere of a film that was an ode to Swanberg’s mumblecore legacy — and features a cameo by the Chicago-based filmmaker — but one that lacked the talent required to make such a niche style work.
Loafers is written and directed by Zach Schnitzler, who co-stars as Isaac alongside Cameron (Dan Haller) as best friends recently graduated from college who live together in a Chicago neighborhood apartment. It’s a hangout movie. Isaac and Cameron don’t have much going on. They work, but work doesn’t consume their lives. They have a small group of close friends who they drink and smoke with, watch YouTube, and just sit around with, shooting the shit.
The film is mostly about nothing, but it’s also kind of about Isaac and Cameron’s friendship. The years after graduation are often about finding yourself just as much as college itself can be. When the film focuses on that, it’s really affecting. We simply don’t get enough of that.
I’m an elder millennial who can very much relate to the situation and mindset Isaac and Cameron find themselves in. In my immediate post-grad years, I moved to Austin, Texas, and lived with my best friends, working jobs we didn’t care about, partying every night, not really thinking about the future beyond what was right in front of us.
Thoughts of those days are ripe with nostalgia, making me presumably the target audience for a film like Loafers. Indeed, there are moments that elicit such memories, but our characters lack the charisma to truly unpack what this film is trying to do. Swanberg’s films feel real because the conversations are more authentic — more or less the goal of mumblecore — but they still require a certain caliber of actor to pull it off. With respect to our young thespians, they yet do not.
Loafers has some fun moments and it succeeds at times in eliciting nostalgia for the post-grad haze where you are adrift in the world, whether you realize it or not, but the technical and acting chops are severely lacking for a full length feature worth taking seriously. If it were a student effort, I’d say it was a fine effort. It’s said this film was made in 11 days and for $6,000, which is only an achievement if it doesn’t feel like it.