Atom Egoyan’s The Adjuster (1991) is the kind of film that gets introduced at film festivals with phrases like “bold psychological exploration” or “a meditation on identity and trauma,” when in reality it plays like someone filmed a philosophy major’s anxiety dream using a discarded David Lynch starter kit and the last roll of Canadian government grant money. It’s weird. It’s cold. It’s technically about an insurance adjuster but mostly about how people in Egoyan’s world apparently can’t do anything without turning it into a sexual transaction or a metaphor.
The film centers around Noah Render (Elias Koteas), a bald, brooding insurance adjuster who’s less concerned with deductibles and premiums than he is with sleeping in the same bed as his policyholders. He visits people whose homes have burned down, then offers them lodging and counseling, which would be noble if it didn’t feel like a low-budget cult leader recruitment pitch. His process involves sleeping with clients, spoon-feeding them vague reassurances, and walking around in clothes that suggest he’s one uncomfortable moment away from crying in a Canadian Tire parking lot.
His wife, Hera (Arsinée Khanjian, Egoyan’s real-life spouse and recurring screen presence), is a film censor who spends her days watching porn and deciding what’s too “disturbing” for the public. Because nothing says domestic bliss like emotionally detached sex scenes followed by a dinner of emotional numbness and unspoken marital tension. Their young son mostly wanders the hallways, unsupervised, occasionally stumbling into metaphor like a sentient, wide-eyed question mark.
If this all sounds like a setup for something coherent—maybe a dark satire of bureaucracy or a meditation on grief—you’re out of luck. Egoyan’s real interest lies in weaving a web of surreal, detached encounters where characters engage in stilted dialogue, odd behaviors, and scenes that seem designed to confuse, disturb, or bore you—sometimes all at once.
Plot, as it turns out, is not The Adjuster’s strong suit. Or even its suit at all. It meanders. There’s a house fire. There’s a couple (Gabrielle Rose and Don McKellar) who show up wanting to reenact bizarre sexual power plays in rented homes. There’s a nude photoshoot involving a taxidermied zebra. There’s a bizarre game of “real estate seduction” that unfolds like a parody of late-night cable TV programming from an alternate dimension. If any of this is ringing alarm bells, good—it means you’re still conscious.
The acting is either impressively restrained or comatose, depending on your tolerance for quiet existential dread delivered through half-whispers and glances that last longer than most sitcom episodes. Elias Koteas, God bless him, leans fully into the role with the intensity of a man who was told not to blink until TIFF was over. His Noah is a mix of wounded protector and emotional vacuum, walking through rooms like a man both haunted and heavily sedated.
Every character talks like they’re reading their lines off a fortune cookie written by Sartre. No one reacts to anything in a remotely human way. Fires destroy homes? That’s unfortunate. People are sleeping with strangers in the middle of therapy sessions? Shrug. A man begins directing a movie in your kitchen while dressed like a discount magician? Fascinating. Every moment is so drenched in detachment that by the halfway mark, you start questioning if this is still a film or a very elaborate Canadian prank.
Visually, the film does have a style—if your idea of style is a beige-on-beige dreamscape filled with soft lighting and haunted wallpaper. Egoyan and cinematographer Paul Sarossy create an atmosphere that’s purposefully sterile, like an insurance office designed by Kafka. The camera lingers, the music hums dissonantly, and you’re left staring at empty spaces and wondering if you’ve missed something important. Spoiler: you haven’t.
The symbolism here is laid on thick. Fire = destruction of the past. Insurance = trying to contain chaos. Sex = a stand-in for every human interaction. Porn = commentary on voyeurism and emotional numbness. If that sounds profound, congratulations—you’ve just described 90% of Egoyan’s filmography in four bullet points. But The Adjuster is especially guilty of mistaking vagueness for profundity. It’s not that the film refuses to explain itself—it just doesn’t seem particularly interested in being understood at all.
The problem isn’t that the movie is weird. Weird can be great. Weird can be David Lynch. Weird can be Cronenberg. But The Adjuster is the kind of weird that feels like it’s daring you to enjoy it just so it can smugly inform you that you didn’t “get it.” It’s weird without rhythm. Weird without momentum. Weird for weird’s sake.
Worse, it’s emotionally hollow. Egoyan clearly wants us to feel something—anything—for these characters. But the film is so wrapped in its own icy aesthetic that connection becomes impossible. You’re not watching people. You’re watching concepts. Abstract, overwritten, strangely erotic concepts acting out a play called Human Behavior: A Shrug in Three Acts.
By the time the movie drifts to its conclusion—which involves some surreal combination of betrayal, reconciliation, and fire insurance—you’re left with that uniquely Egoyanian feeling: slightly disturbed, vaguely confused, and deeply relieved it’s over. There’s no catharsis, no arc, no revelation. Just a slow fade-out and a lingering sense of intellectual gaslighting.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 awkward role-play scenarios.
Watch it if you’re a fan of surreal Canadian discomfort, Freudian wallpaper, and cinematic therapy sessions that double as experimental sleep aids. Everyone else: adjust yourself to the idea that life is too short for emotionally repressed insurance erotica.