Choke (2008) on Netflix
Victor Mancini fakes choking in upscale restaurants so the strangers who rescue him hand over money, which pays for his mother Ida's care. Dr. Paige Marshall asks him to father a child.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/1035,015 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes56%
Trailer
Plot summary
Victor Mancini works at a theme park, reenacting colonial American life with his best friend Denny, and attends meetings for sex addicts. He pays for the care of his mother, Ida, who has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a private hospital, by choking on purpose in expensive restaurants; the diners who rescue him hand over money out of sympathy. Ida never recognizes him when he visits. Dr. Paige Marshall, who looks after her, says Ida is getting worse, and proposes an experimental stem cell treatment that would require a newborn baby with Victor's genes, so she asks Victor to father the child. He wants to learn who his father was, and Denny agrees to pose as him and question Ida.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Choke (2008)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Clark Gregg spent five years adapting Chuck Palahniuk's novel Choke, then wrote a personal version he expected the author to reject; instead, Palahniuk liked and supported the departures Gregg had made from the book.
- Radiohead's 2007 song "Reckoner" was used in the credits, and Chuck Palahniuk said the band had written an ambient soundtrack for the film, a claim Radiohead's management denied.
- The defunct Essex County Psychiatric Hospital in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, was a major filming location; the filmmakers believed production would not have taken off without the discovered hospital, given the project's minimal budget.
