The Package

The Absurdity of the Severed Member

Comedy is almost always about stakes. The higher the stakes, the more ridiculous the behavior required to maintain them. In Jake Szymanski’s *The Package*, the stakes are literal: a teenage boy, Jeremy, has accidentally severed his own penis while camping, and his friends are now in a frantic, cross-country race to get it to a hospital before the window for reattachment closes. It’s a premise that feels like it fell out of an *American Pie* script circa 2001, but the execution leans closer to a frantic, R-rated farce that’s somehow more earnest than it has any right to be.



Szymanski, who cut his teeth in the world of *Funny or Die* shorts and the mockumentary *7 Days in Hell*, understands the rhythm of stupidity better than most. He knows that the funniest moments are not the ones where the characters are "being funny," but the ones where they are deeply, desperately committed to a terrible idea. There is no winking at the camera here. The characters treat the tragedy of a lost appendage with the same gravity a surgeon might bring to an organ transplant. That mismatch—the monumental importance placed on a colossally stupid injury—is where the film finds its heartbeat. It’s not a film about a penis; it’s a film about the terrified, hyper-focused loyalty of adolescence.



There is a specific sequence—the "cooler hand-off"—that acts as the centerpiece of the film’s manic energy. The group is navigating a chaotic, shifting environment, trying to keep the "package" on ice while dealing with secondary catastrophes. Watch the way the editing speeds up, mirroring their rising panic. It’s a classic screwball setup, updated for the era of social media paranoia. As *The A.V. Club’s* Ignatiy Vishnevetsky noted in his assessment, the film manages to be "nasty, brutish, and short," but he was also right to point out that there is a surprisingly warm undercurrent to the gore. It’s not just a collection of "ick" moments; it’s about how these kids, who have been drifting apart as they stare down the barrel of graduation, are suddenly glued together by this bizarre shared trauma.

The cast, particularly Daniel Doheny and Geraldine Viswanathan, anchor the chaos with just enough humanity to keep us from checking our watches. Doheny, playing the hapless, injured Jeremy, spends much of the film in a state of high-pitched, incapacitated panic. It’s a physical performance that relies heavily on his ability to look fragile and entirely out of his depth. Viswanathan, conversely, is the pragmatic engine of the group. Having seen her in sharper, more indie-focused roles later in her career, it’s interesting to look back at her work here; she treats the absurdity with a straight face, which is the only way this kind of material survives. She does not act like she’s in a teen raunch-comedy; she acts like she’s in a thriller, and that distinction is exactly why it works.



Ultimately, *The Package* is not going to redefine the genre or offer deep philosophical insight into the human condition. It is, undeniably, a movie about a severed penis on a camping trip. But there is something admirable about its commitment. It does not try to be high art, and it does not apologize for being lowbrow. It occupies a space of pure, unadulterated absurdity, reminding us that sometimes, the best way to handle the terrifying transition into adulthood is to treat your most embarrassing mistake like the end of the world. It’s a messy, loud, and frequently gross film, but I have certainly spent ninety minutes in worse company.