A documentary by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve. Rating unavailable.

Tickled is so weird, so unpredictable, it’s hard to know how to categorize it. Director and on-camera subject David Farrier must feel the same way. Because what started out as a kind of whacky human interest story only gradually turned into a true-crime tale with increasingly frightening implications.

A popular entertainment reporter on New Zealand TV, Farrier (who also plays the interviewer in Rhys Darby’s Short Poppies mockumentary series) thought he had another fun story from the margins when he spotted an Internet ad looking for participants in something called competition-level tickling. When he contacted the American promoter, Jane O’Brien Media, he was told to go away—that O’Brien didn’t do business with “homosexual journalists” like him. That struck him as odd, especially since the ads were aimed at “lean, athletic guys, ages 18-25”. When he persisted, he started getting abusive emails, threatening lawsuits, and worse.

By the time three lawyers showed up in Auckland, warning him to cease and desist, Farrier and producing partner/director Dylan Reeve realized they must be onto something. That meant grabbing gear and heading to L.A., Florida, Michigan, and finally New York, with all roads seemingly leading to a wealthy, middle-aged Italian-American homophobe and anti-Semite; apparently, his penchant for ticklish boys is overshadowed only by a need to control and potentially destroy other people’s lives. To say more would be to unduly straighten the pretzel-like twists of this Sundance hit.