Some people fled the cinema when Cheap Thrills played at last November’s Whistler Film Festival. The only surprising thing about that is that David Koechner is surprised at all.

“Was this in Canada?” he asks, calling the Straight from Los Angeles. “Well, I guess, you know—whatever. I studied with [acting coach] Del Close, and he said a boo is as good as a laugh; you’ve got a reaction. I tell ya, that film has not left those people. This one definitely sticks to your marrow, doesn’t it?”

Oh yeah, it does. Think of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Man Bites Dog—the latter being a film that Koechner himself happens to “fucking love”—and you’re starting to appreciate what director E. L. Katz has achieved with his savagely brilliant debut feature (opening Sunday [March 9]). Set in L.A., it’s the tale of a rich guy, Colin, who waves a wad of money at two poor guys, Craig and Vince, and invites them back to his Hollywood pad for an evening of escalating, coked-up dares.

There’s more to it than that, of course, with plenty at stake for Craig (Pat Healy), a decent man with a wife and baby but no job “since, like, an hour ago”, as he tells his ex-con friend Vince (Ethan Embry) when they bump into each other in a bar. Colin and his icily gorgeous wife, Violet (Sara Paxton), have them nailed instantly. What follows is a dare on the audience as much as anything—those punters in Whistler only made it two-thirds of the way through—but the film’s critique of class warfare in modern America is probably the most vicious thing of all about Cheap Thrills.

To that end, Koechner says he used the 2003 documentary The Corporation as his point of reference for the disturbingly likable Colin, even if he never imagined where his wealth comes from, exactly. “We know that he’s a capitalist, he’s most likely an entrepreneur, corporate-merger-type person,” he says. “So we know thematically who he is. It’s a person who just eats others for a living and doesn’t have a conscience about it.”

The cast is uniformly outstanding, but it’s Koechner, fresh from his more usual kind of fare in Anchorman 2, who’s the real revelation. “Yeah, I don’t have to be a jackass,” he says with a chuckle, adding that the film’s minuscule budget and insanely tight shooting schedule only benefited the production. “You can’t help but thrive,” he says. “The second day, I said, ‘Something is happening here. Something special is happening here that’s very rare for me personally to experience while making a film.’ It was electric to me.”

This is why we’re seeing Koechner continue to get behind the movie as it fans out on its limited release across North America. “I am excited about it,” he says, emphatically, “and I do love it. If the reverse was true, I would probably not be doing this interview, ’cause I’m too busy. But yeah, I think this film is… I’m going to say ‘the tits’, just to offend everybody.”

Oh, please. Until you see this ferocious, pissed-off movie, let it be known that Koechner hasn’t even begun offending us.