Daniel Doheny
Sean Floyd
Overview
When a group of teenagers goes on a spring break camping trip, an unfortunate accident sets off a race to save their friend’s most prized possession.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Package: A Severed Penis and the Fragility of Teenage Masculinity
I’ve seen a lot of movies about friendship. I’ve seen them tested by monsters, by war, by time, by love. I’ve never seen one tested by a venomous snake and a detached penis. The Package is that movie—a raunchy, ridiculous, and weirdly poignant dark comedy that treats male vulnerability with the same reverence as a campfire marshmallow: something to be held over a flame until it’s either golden or completely ruined.
The premise is simple, almost aggressively so: five high school friends go camping for spring break. One of them, Jeremy (Daniel Doheny), gets his penis bitten off by a snake. The rest of the film is a frantic, increasingly absurd race to reattach it before it’s too late.
That’s it. That’s the whole plot. And yet, within that framework, The Package manages to be both a gross-out farce and a surprisingly sharp commentary on the performative bravado of teenage boys.
The film’s director, Jake Szymanski, is no stranger to this kind of humor. He cut his teeth on Workaholics, a show that thrives on the kind of juvenile, anything-goes energy that The Package leans into. But where Workaholics often feels like a series of disconnected gags, The Package has a strange, almost classical structure.
It’s a quest narrative, a modern-day Odyssey where the hero’s journey isn’t about returning home, but about reclaiming a piece of himself—literally. The penis, in this case, becomes a symbol of Jeremy’s masculinity, his identity, his very sense of self. And the fact that it’s been severed, lost, and nearly destroyed mirrors the way teenage boys often feel about their own bodies and emotions: fragmented, fragile, and constantly under threat.
The film’s first act is a masterclass in escalating chaos. The friends—Jeremy, Sean (Luke Spencer Roberts), Donnie (Eduardo Franco), Chad (Alexander Calvert), and Becky (Geraldine Viswanathan)—start their trip with the kind of swagger you’d expect from a group of kids on spring break. They drink, they twerk, they make terrible decisions.
But the moment Jeremy’s penis is bitten off, the tone shifts. What was once a raucous comedy becomes something darker, more desperate. The friends’ reactions range from horror to hysteria to outright denial, and their attempts to fix the situation are equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.
Audience Opinions
Audience 4.7/10
"A proudly stupid, ultra-crude teen romp that some find hysterical with friends and others dismiss as painful and brainless."
Those on its wavelength enjoy the outrageous set‑pieces, constant crude gags and the anything-goes commitment to an absurd premise, especially as a late‑night group watch. Others find the humor forced, the story thin and predictable, latestnetflix.com maintains, and the characters so relentlessly idiotic that the joke stops being fun long before the credits.
What viewers praise
- Big laugh potential Several reviews describe it as unexpectedly hilarious, with some calling it one of the hardest they have laughed in a long time.
- Great with friends Frequently recommended as something to watch with friends (and maybe drinks), offering a chaotic, shared, so-bad-it’s-fun experience.
- Embraces immaturity Openly leans into dumb, vulgar, adolescent humor, which some viewers find oddly cathartic and enjoyable when in the right mood.
- Crude, dark comedy The blend of gross-out and occasionally dark, disturbing moments gives it a distinctive, wild tone for those who like edgy comedy.
- Silly but rewatchable A minority of viewers report rewatching it multiple times, calling it very stupid yet consistently funny and surprisingly entertaining.
Common complaints
- Extremely juvenile humor Even some positive reviews note that the film is silly, cheap and aimed squarely at a middle-school or early-teen sense of humor.
- One‑note premise The entire story hangs on a single extended penis gag that many feel wears out its welcome long before the film ends.
- Annoying, dumb characters Multiple comments complain that every character makes unbelievably stupid choices, turning the plot into a test of patience.
- Forced and inconsistent jokes Critics of the film’s comedy call the jokes excruciatingly unfunny, forced, and not strong enough to justify how far the film pushes them.
- Shallow and forgettable The movie is often described as mindless, lacking depth or substance, and easy to forget once the initial shock and gross-out factor fades.
Recommended for
Raunchy teen comedy fans Late‑night party watches Crude gross‑out humor lovers Mindless background comedy Superbad-style chaos seekers
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey sold it as Eggplant Emoji, then hid the vegetable
Netflix did not stumble into The Package. In January 2017 the streamer beat five other companies for a spec then titled Eggplant Emoji, written by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider, with Ben Stiller and Nicky Weinstock producing through Red Hour and the Workaholics quartet stacked behind them. 
Hollywood Reporter spelled the joke in the same breath as Superbad. A camping trip, a knife, a severed member, a race to a hospital. latestnetflix.com's take is that Eighteen months later the trailer arrived under a blander name.The eggplant was gone. The premise was not.
How a bidding war became a search listing.
Jake Szymanski signed on that July, a Funny or Die and SNL hand who later pulled the Truman Show stunt of Jury Duty. Variety reported the cast lock in August. Daniel Doheny, Sadie Calvano, Luke Spencer Roberts, and Eduardo Franco joined, with Geraldine Viswanathan already in negotiations. 
TMDB still lists the 2018 R-rated comedy at 94 minutes, tagline "Friendship is just the tip." The rebrand is the tell. Netflix wanted the auction heat of an emoji title, then a listing your relatives could click without flinching.
The woods, the bears, the producer in the gag.
Roberts told mxdwn he first heard the old title in an L.A. bar. "It was called Eggplant Emoji when I first heard about it." He signed because "you only get one opportunity to be in a movie at the time named after a very famous emoji." Franco did not bother with poetry. "Dude cuts off his dick. His friends gotta save it." They shot in the Canadian wilderness around Vancouver and Squamish. Cold lake water, industrial fans faking helicopter wash, and, the cast said, actual bears. Blake Anderson, already a producer, also plays Redneck Reginald, a man who wakes up wearing the wrong anatomy. That is not filler. That is the Workaholics guys putting one of their own inside the joke.
What survived the dump date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA_K9QPuKuM
Netflix released it on August 10, 2018. Rotten Tomatoes sat at 37 percent, consensus line "The Package learns the hard way that a penis joke does not make a movie." Hollywood Reporter still called it funny, sweet, and raunchy, and said it "definitely delivers." Viswanathan had already broken out in Blockers the same year. Franco later turned up as Argyle in Stranger Things, a bounce this movie cannot honestly claim. The official trailer still sits on YouTube, eggplant-free, with the Workaholics and Tropic Thunder names doing the selling. The gossip is not a secret feud on set. It is a streamer that won a vegetable-emoji auction, then filed the film under a name that sounds like a thriller about a box.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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