Sour Party (2023) [MVD/Anchor Bay Blu-ray Review]

Sour Party underwhelmed me at first. I’ve been watching indie comedies since the mumblecore explosion of the mid-2000s, and I thought I’d become immune to the specific discomfort that comes from watching privileged white people make terrible decisions while complaining about their circumstances. Then I watched Sour Party, and realized there’s always a new depth of secondhand embarrassment waiting to be discovered. This isn’t a criticism exactly, more an acknowledgment that Amanda and Michael Drexton have created something genuinely uncomfortable in ways that feel both familiar and fresh, like watching Broad City directed by the Safdie Brothers after everyone involved did too much ketamine.

Sour Party follows Gwen (Samantha Westervelt) and James (Amanda Drexton) as they scramble across Los Angeles trying to scrounge up $150 for a baby shower gift. That’s it. That’s the movie. But within this simple framework, the Drextons have created a savage portrait of millennial failure that feels simultaneously too real and completely absurd. The MVD/Anchor Bay Blu-ray release, which dropped in June 2025, presents this chaos in crisp 1080p that makes every bad decision feel uncomfortably immediate, like you’re trapped in the backseat of their deteriorating Honda Civic watching everything unfold in real-time.

What makes Sour Party fascinating isn’t its originality but its commitment to making you hate its protagonists while somehow still caring what happens to them. Gwen and James are awful people, the kind of thirty-somethings who’ve weaponized their failures into a personality, treating everyone they encounter as either an obstacle or an ATM. Yet watching them navigate Los Angeles’s ecosystem of grifters, wannabe artists, and actual cult leaders (yes, Corey Feldman plays a cult leader, and yes, it’s exactly as weird as you’d expect) becomes weirdly compelling. The Blu-ray’s commentary track reveals this was semi-autobiographical, which explains why the self-loathing feels so authentic it practically radiates off the screen.

Los Angeles as Purgatory: The City of Failed Dreams

The real star of Sour Party isn’t Gwen or James but Los Angeles itself, presented here as a sun-bleached purgatory where everyone’s either a failed artist or a successful scammer. The Drextons shoot LA like the Coen Brothers shot Fargo, finding absurdist comedy in mundane locations that become increasingly surreal as our protagonists descend deeper into desperation. Every location in Sour Party feels both hyper-specific and universally recognizable, from the overpriced coffee shops where baristas have MFAs to the “wellness centers” that are definitely not cults until they definitely are.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years, and Sour Party captures something about this city that more polished productions miss: the way failure here feels like performance art. Everyone Gwen and James encounter is playing a role, from the thrift store owner who’s created an entire personality around vintage curation to the sex worker who’s pivoted to selling “neon smoke farts” online (I wish I was making this up). The film understands that in LA, even rock bottom has a pitch deck and a social media strategy.

The production design in Sour Party deserves special recognition for making every location feel authentically grimy without being artificially distressed. These aren’t movie sets dressed to look rundown but actual Los Angeles locations that radiate the specific exhaustion of a city where everyone’s hustling but nobody’s succeeding. The baby shower destination that bookends the film perfectly captures that upper-middle-class aesthetic that makes you understand why Gwen feels so desperate to show up with the right gift. It’s not about the money; it’s about proving you belong somewhere you clearly don’t.

What’s particularly clever about Sour Party’s vision of Los Angeles is how it avoids the usual landmarks and neighborhoods we see in films. No Hollywood sign, no Venice Beach, no Downtown lofts. Instead, we get the Los Angeles that most people actually inhabit: strip malls, apartment complexes with names like “Paradise Gardens,” streets that could be anywhere except they’re definitely here. This anonymity makes the film feel more universal even as it remains specifically rooted in LA’s particular brand of dysfunction.

Amanda Drexton and Samantha Westervelt: A Toxic Friendship for the Ages

The chemistry between Amanda Drexton’s James and Samantha Westervelt’s Gwen forms the rotten core of Sour Party, a friendship so toxic you can practically smell it through the screen. These aren’t friends so much as co-conspirators in a shared delusion that the world owes them something for existing. Drexton and Westervelt, who co-wrote the script with Michael Drexton, have created characters who feel lived-in to an uncomfortable degree, like they’re playing versions of themselves they’re not entirely proud of.

James, as played by Amanda Drexton, represents a specific type of Los Angeles failure: the person who’s tried everything (acting, writing, sex work, MLM schemes) without committing to anything, treating each venture as temporary until their “real” career materializes. Drexton plays James with a manic energy that suggests someone constantly on the verge of either breakthrough or breakdown, never quite sure which direction they’re heading. Her performance walks a tightrope between comedy and tragedy, making James simultaneously insufferable and weirdly sympathetic.

Westervelt’s Gwen provides the perfect counterbalance, playing the allegedly responsible one who’s actually just better at hiding her dysfunction. Where James externalizes every thought and feeling, Gwen internalizes until she explodes, usually at the worst possible moment. Westervelt, who’s also an accomplished bass player with bands like Death Valley Girls, brings a musician’s timing to her performance, knowing exactly when to drop the comedic beat for maximum impact.

The dynamic between Gwen and James in Sour Party reminds me of toxic friendships I’ve had and witnessed, where two people enable each other’s worst instincts while convincing themselves they’re being supportive. Every scene between them crackles with the tension of people who know each other too well to maintain boundaries but not well enough to actually help. Their conversations feel improvised even when hitting scripted plot points, suggesting Drexton and Westervelt spent considerable time developing their characters’ rhythm.

The Corey Feldman Renaissance Nobody Asked For

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Corey Feldman gives one of Sour Party’s best performances. Playing a cult leader/MLM guru hybrid named Phoenix, Feldman leans into his own reputation as Hollywood’s eternal lost boy to create something genuinely unsettling. This isn’t stunt casting but a genuine performance that uses Feldman’s public persona to comment on Los Angeles’s ecosystem of broken dreams and desperate believers.

The sequence where Gwen and James visit Phoenix’s compound represents Sour Party at its most ambitious, transforming from cringe comedy into something approaching surrealist horror. Feldman plays Phoenix as someone who’s bought into his own bullshit so completely that he’s achieved a kind of transcendent delusion. When he explains his business model (which involves crystals, essential oils, and something called “abundance manifestation”), you can’t tell if he’s running a con or if he genuinely believes what he’s selling. Feldman’s commitment to the bit is admirable and genuinely funny.

This performance makes me reconsider Feldman’s entire late career, wondering if he’s been playing a character this whole time, a commentary on child stardom and Hollywood’s disposal of its young. Probably not, but Sour Party gives him space to weaponize his weirdness in service of actual comedy rather than unintentional camp. His scenes with Drexton and Westervelt have an electric unpredictability, like nobody quite knows where the scene is going, including the directors.

The fact that Feldman is one of Sour Party’s “name” actors says something about the film’s positioning in the marketplace. This isn’t quite mumblecore, not quite mainstream comedy, existing in that weird middle space where Reggie Watts cameos make sense. The film wears its low budget as a badge of honor, using financial limitations to force creative solutions that a bigger production would smooth over with money.

The Anchor Bay Revival: What Does This Even Mean?

The most surprising thing about Sour Party might be that it’s being distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment, a label I genuinely thought died with physical media’s first collapse. Turns out Thomas Zambeck and Brian Katz revived the brand specifically to release independent films like this, which raises questions about what Anchor Bay even means in 2025. Is this nostalgia for a distribution label? Strategic brand recognition? Or just two guys who bought a recognizable name because it was probably cheap?

Whatever the reasoning, having Anchor Bay attached to Sour Party adds a layer of metatextual weirdness that fits the film perfectly. Anchor Bay was never quite prestigious, never quite trash, existing in that middle space where you’d find genuinely interesting films next to absolute garbage. Sour Party fits that tradition perfectly, a film too weird for mainstream distribution but too polished for true underground status. It’s exactly the kind of movie you’d find in the comedy section of a video store and take a chance on based on the cover art.

The MVD partnership for physical distribution makes sense given their position as one of the last independent distributors still committed to Blu-ray releases. In an era where most indie films go straight to streaming if they’re lucky, Sour Party getting a physical release feels both nostalgic and futuristic, like the filmmakers are betting that physical media’s death has been greatly exaggerated. The fact that it’s available at all suggests someone believes there’s still an audience for owning movies, even weird little comedies about terrible people.

This release strategy also positions Sour Party interestingly in the marketplace. It’s not quite prestigious enough for Criterion or Arrow, too professionally made for Vinegar Syndrome or AGFA, too American for Eureka or Indicator. Anchor Bay/MVD feels exactly right, a mid-tier label for a mid-tier film that’s better than it has any right to be.

Technical Presentation: Making Digital Look Like Film (Sort Of)

The Blu-ray presentation of Sour Party delivers a solid if unremarkable 1080p transfer that accurately represents the film’s digital photography without trying to hide its low-budget origins. Shot on what appears to be consumer-grade digital cameras (the commentary confirms they used whatever they could afford), the image has that specifically flat quality of modern independent cinema where everything’s in focus but nothing feels quite real. This isn’t a criticism; the aesthetic perfectly matches the film’s themes of surface-level existence and performed authenticity.

Color grading in Sour Party leans heavily on that modern indie film look of slightly desaturated naturalism with occasional pops of Los Angeles sunshine. The baby shower sequences get a warmer, more inviting palette that makes you understand why Gwen feels so out of place, while the various

scammer encounters have a cooler, more clinical look that emphasizes their transactional nature. The Blu-ray maintains these subtle color choices without the compression artifacts that would plague a streaming version.

Detail levels are consistently good throughout Sour Party, though the digital source means there’s none of the texture you’d get from film. Faces are rendered clearly enough to catch every uncomfortable expression, every moment of barely suppressed panic as Gwen and James realize their latest scheme isn’t working. The Los Angeles locations benefit from the clarity, revealing production design details that add to the film’s lived-in feeling. You can see the water stains on apartment walls, the dust on thrift store merchandise, the genuine wear on everything these characters touch.

Black levels remain stable throughout, important for Sour Party’s surprising number of interior scenes in poorly lit apartments and questionable business establishments. The digital cinematography handles these low-light situations competently if not impressively, maintaining visibility without the noise that would plague lesser productions. There’s no grain to speak of, giving everything that specifically digital cleanliness that you either accept or spend the whole movie wishing looked more filmic.

Audio Design: Hearing Every Awkward Silence

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track on this release feels like overkill for a film that’s basically people talking in rooms, but it does reveal surprising attention to sound design. The Drextons and their sound team have created distinct acoustic environments for each location, from the echo of empty apartments to the oppressive ambient noise of Los Angeles traffic. It’s subtle work that you might not consciously notice but definitely contributes to Sour Party’s sense of place.

Dialogue recording in Sour Party appears to be mostly production sound, giving conversations a natural, unprocessed quality that enhances the realism. You can hear the room tone change between locations, the occasional off-mic moment when actors move unexpectedly, the genuine acoustic properties of real spaces rather than ADR booths. This approach occasionally means dialogue isn’t as crystal clear as bigger productions, but it adds to the documentary feel the film occasionally achieves.

The music in Sour Party deserves special mention for being genuinely good in unexpected ways. The score by [information not available in search results] creates an interesting contrast with the grimy realism, using ethereal synths and processed guitars to suggest the characters’ delusions of grandeur. The soundtrack also features contributions from Westervelt’s actual bands, adding another layer of authenticity to the Los Angeles music scene portrayal.

Sound effects work remains minimal but effective, emphasizing the mundane reality of the characters’ situation. Car doors that don’t quite close properly, apartment buzzers that sound broken, phones with cracked speakers, all contributing to the feeling that everything in these characters’ lives is held together with tape and denial. The surround channels get minimal use except for traffic and environmental ambience, but that’s appropriate for a film this intimate and claustrophobic.

Special Features: The Commentary Track Saves Everything

The highlight of this release is unquestionably the commentary track featuring both Drextons, Westervelt, and cinematographer Steven Moreno. This is one of those commentaries that’s almost better than the film itself, providing context that transforms Sour Party from an occasionally amusing comedy into a fascinating document of independent filmmaking in contemporary Los Angeles. The participants have great chemistry, unsurprising given their collaborative relationship, and they’re remarkably honest about both the film’s inspirations and limitations.

The Drextons reveal that Sour Party emerged from the failure of a previous project, making the film’s themes of creative disappointment even more resonant. They discuss shooting guerrilla-style around Los Angeles, often without permits, grabbing locations when they could and adjusting the script to accommodate what was available. This production history explains the film’s lived-in quality; they were literally using their own apartments, their friends’ businesses, places they actually knew rather than location scouting for the “perfect” spot.

Westervelt provides insight into the friendship dynamics between Gwen and James, confirming that much of it was based on real relationships and actual conversations. She’s particularly good at explaining the female friendship aspect that feels different from typical buddy comedies, the specific way women enable each other’s bad decisions while maintaining plausible deniability about their toxicity. Her background as a musician also provides interesting perspective on Los Angeles’s creative scene and how different artistic communities overlap and interact.

The “Video Yearbook” feature is basically just behind-the-scenes footage edited together without much structure, but it does provide a window into the film’s DIY production. Watching the cast and crew figure out shots in real-time, dealing with location issues, and generally making it work with minimal resources is genuinely inspiring for anyone thinking about making their own film. It’s not polished or particularly informative, but it does capture the energy of independent production.

The Festival Circuit Journey: From Chattanooga to Your Living Room

Sour Party’s path to release tells you everything about the current state of independent film distribution. Premiering at the Chattanooga Film Festival in 2023 (where it won the Audience Award), the film then played various genre festivals despite not really being a genre film. This festival strategy speaks to the reality that comedy doesn’t have a clear festival path unless it’s either extremely broad or extremely weird. Sour Party is neither, existing in that middle space that makes programming difficult.

The decision to play Popcorn Frights and other horror-adjacent festivals was particularly clever, even if slightly misleading. Sour Party isn’t horror, but it does share DNA with films like Good Time or Uncut Gems where the anxiety becomes so intense it approaches body horror. Marketing the film as a “thriller” might be stretching it, but I understand why they tried. Pure comedies, especially ones about unlikeable protagonists, are nearly impossible to sell in the current marketplace.

The Anchor Bay acquisition and theatrical release strategy (mostly one-night screenings with Q&As) suggests understanding of the film’s limitations and audience. This isn’t a wide release film, probably not even a limited release film, but something that finds its audience through word of mouth and strategic positioning. The Blu-ray release feels like the real debut, the format where Sour Party can find its people without the pressure of box office performance.

Reading reviews from various festivals, it’s clear Sour Party divided audiences between those who connected with its specific brand of millennial anxiety and those who found it insufferable. This divisiveness is probably intentional; the Drextons seem aware they’re making a film for a specific audience who’ll recognize themselves in these terrible characters. The festival awards it won came from audiences, not critics, suggesting it works better with regular viewers than professional watchers.

The Millennial Condition: Failure as Performance Art

What Sour Party captures better than most recent comedies is the specific texture of millennial failure, the way a generation raised on participation trophies and told they were special struggles with the reality of being thoroughly ordinary. Gwen and James aren’t t

ragic figures so much as pathetic ones, people who’ve confused having problems with having personality, treating their dysfunction as proof of depth rather than evidence of immaturity.

The film’s episodic structure, bouncing from one failed scheme to another, mirrors the gig economy lifestyle many millennials inhabit. Nothing is permanent, everything is temporary, success is always one connection away but never actually arrives. Each person Gwen and James visit represents a different version of Los Angeles success (cult leader, sex worker, thrift store owner), but they’re all revealed as different flavors of the same hustle, everyone performing prosperity while barely surviving.

I found myself thinking about Sour Party in relation to other recent films about millennials failing upward or sideways or just failing. Films like Shiva Baby, Zola, or Support the Girls capture similar energies but with more sympathy for their protagonists. Sour Party refuses that sympathy, suggesting Gwen and James deserve their situation because they refuse to acknowledge their role in creating it. This lack of sentiment feels both refreshing and exhausting, like the film is daring you to care about people who clearly don’t care about themselves.

The baby shower gift as MacGuffin is particularly brilliant, representing everything about class anxiety and family disappointment that drives these characters. It’s not about the $150, which they could probably earn if they got actual jobs, but about what showing up empty-handed represents: final confirmation that they’re failures. The specificity of the gift (a wellness kit with essential oils and tarot cards) perfectly captures that Los Angeles bourgeois spirituality that commodifies enlightenment into purchasable products.

The AndersonVision Perspective: Why This Matters for Physical Media

Regular readers of AndersonVision know we champion physical media releases of films that might otherwise disappear into the streaming void. Sour Party represents exactly the kind of film that needs physical preservation: too small for sustained streaming presence, too specific for broad appeal, but too interesting to be forgotten. This MVD/Anchor Bay release ensures the film exists beyond algorithm recommendations and licensing deals.

Like our recent coverage of other independent comedies, Sour Party demonstrates that comedy remains one of cinema’s most vital and overlooked genres. The film’s willingness to make audiences uncomfortable, to present protagonists without redemption arcs, to end without lessons learned, feels genuinely transgressive in an era of feel-good streaming content designed not to offend anyone. Physical media allows films like this to exist without fitting into predetermined platform categories.

The commentary track alone justifies this physical release, providing context that transforms the viewing experience. Streaming would never include this kind of supplementary material, treating films as disposable content rather than cultural artifacts worth examining. The Drextons’ honesty about their process, their failures, their inspirations creates a document about independent filmmaking in the 2020s that’s valuable beyond the film itself.

For collectors of independent cinema, this release represents the kind of discovery that makes physical media hunting worthwhile. Not every film needs to be a masterpiece to deserve preservation. Sometimes documenting a specific moment, a specific feeling, a specific type of failure is enough. Sour Party captures something about Los Angeles, about millennials, about America that feels worth preserving even if it’s not always pleasant to watch.

The Comedy That Hurts: When Laughing Feels Wrong

The most uncomfortable thing about Sour Party is how often it made me laugh at things I knew weren’t okay. Watching Gwen and James manipulate, lie, and scheme their way through Los Angeles shouldn’t be funny, but the Drextons find comedy in the gap between their characters’ self-perception and reality. Every interaction becomes a masterclass in social manipulation failing because everyone else is running the same con.

There’s a sequence involving succulent liberation (yes, they steal plants) that shouldn’t work but becomes genuinely hilarious through sheer commitment to the bit. The Drextons understand that comedy comes from specificity, from following an absurd premise to its logical conclusion even when that conclusion involves grand theft succulent. These moments of genuine comedy make the film’s darker elements more palatable, sugar-coating the poison just enough to make it go down.

But Sour Party also understands when not to be funny, when to let the desperation show through without undercutting it with jokes. A scene where James pitches her “neon smoke farts” business idea starts as comedy but becomes genuinely sad as you realize she believes this is her path to success. These tonal shifts could feel jarring, but the Drextons manage them with surprising skill, knowing when to push for laughs and when to pull back and let the sadness breathe.

The film’s ending, which I won’t spoil, refuses the catharsis we expect from comedies. There’s no moment of realization, no growth, no suggestion that Gwen and James will change. They’ll wake up tomorrow and run the same scams, make the same mistakes, blame the same people for their problems. This refusal to provide closure or redemption feels honest to the characters and the world they inhabit. Some people don’t learn; they just continue.

Final Verdict: A Perfectly Imperfect Snapshot of Now

Sour Party isn’t a great film, might not even be a good film, but it’s definitely an interesting film that captures something specific about this moment in American culture. The Drextons have created a comedy that functions as anthropology, documenting a specific type of person in a specific place at a specific time with uncomfortable accuracy. It’s the kind of film that will either speak directly to your experience or leave you completely cold, with little middle ground.

The MVD/Anchor Bay Blu-ray provides solid technical presentation and valuable contextual materials that enhance the viewing experience. The commentary track alone transforms Sour Party from curiosity to document, providing insight into independent filmmaking that’s valuable beyond this specific film. For the price point (usually around $20-25), you’re getting a complete package that respects the film even when the film doesn’t respect its characters.

I’ve watched Sour Party three times now, and each viewing revealed different layers of discomfort and recognition. The first viewing was pure cringe, watching through my fingers as Gwen and James made increasingly terrible decisions. The second viewing, with commentary, provided context that made their choices feel inevitable rather than arbitrary. The third viewing felt like anthropology, studying a specific subspecies of Los Angeles failure with scientific detachment.

For viewers who connect with millennial anxiety comedies, who appreciated the discomfort of Shiva Baby or the chaos of Uncut Gems, Sour Party offers similar energies with less polish but equal commitment. It’s not trying to be liked, barely trying to be comedy, existing in that space where documentation and entertainment blur. The film knows exactly what it is: a sour party you’re invited to but might regret attending.

This release matters because films like Sour Party represent independent cinema’s ability to capture experiences that mainstream production would sanitize. No studio would make this film, no streaming service would know how to market it, no algorithm would know who to recommend it to. It exists because the Drextons needed to exorcise something, and MVD/Anchor Bay provided a platform for that exorcism to reach audiences who need to see it.

Is Sour Party essential viewing? No. Is it comfortable viewing? Definitely not. Is it worthwhile viewing? For the right audience, absolutely. This is cinema as confession, comedy as self-flagellation, Los Angeles as purgatory. The fact that it exists at all feels like a minor miracle. The fact that it got a physical release feels like proof that independent cinema still has space to be genuinely independent, genuinely uncomfortable, genuinely itself.

Sour Party is now available on Blu-ray from MVD/Anchor Bay Entertainment

Technical Specifications:

• Video: 1080p / 1.78:1 aspect ratio
• Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH
• Runtime: 84 minutes
• Region: A
• Studio: MVD/Anchor Bay Entertainment
• Release Date: June 10, 2025

Special Features:

• Audio Commentary with Amanda Drexton, Michael A. Drexton, Samantha Westervelt, and Steven Moreno
• Video Yearbook behind-the-scenes footage
• Theatrical trailer

Cast:

• Samantha Westervelt as Gwen
• Amanda Drexton as James
• Nathan Owens as Tommy
• Ceciley Jenkins as Sarah
• Scott Monahan as Eric
• Corey Feldman as Phoenix
• Reggie Watts as Himself
• Christopher Rodriguez Marquette as Charlie
• Augie Duke as Monica
• Douglas Bennett as Store Owner

Crew:

• Directors: Amanda Drexton, Michael A. Drexton
• Writers: Amanda Drexton, Michael A. Drexton, Samantha Westervelt
• Cinematographer: Steven Moreno
• Producers: Amanda Drexton, Michael A. Drexton
• Executive Producer: Steven Moreno