The Grief Tourist
“He Goes to Dark Places...”
JIM TAHANA doesn't leave much of an impression when he passes you by. But look closer and you'll sense his hunger - the deep hunger of an insatiable American soul - always scanning to devour something - anything that might fill the searing, unexplained void within him. Jim obsesses over the hobby that has been part of his DNA since he was a young boy: grief tourism - the act of traveling with the intent to visit places of tragedy or disaster. Every year his week-long vacations from work are spent going to grief tourist locations in the lives of different serial killers he is fascinated with. This years obsession is Carl Marznap, a mass murder from New Orleans, Louisiana. But this trip is no ordinary vacation as Jim's rancid sexual impulses and weakening grip on reality deteriorate into a violent despair that will ultimately unlock an unspeakable secret festering within him, bringing The Grief Tourist to it's brutal and shocking finale...
This film feels like a descent into a hollow, gnawing emptiness. It's a disturbing, character-driven exploration of obsession and the dark corners of the human psyche, delivered with a grim, unflinching realism.
