Review: ‘Chili Finger’ is exactly what you’d expect from a movie called ‘Chili Finger’
2026 / Dir. Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad / 2026 Chicago Critics Film Festival
Rating: 3.5/5
Watch if you like: Fargo and another reason to avoid fast food.
In the prologue of Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad’s offbeat black comedy caper Chili Finger, a worker at a beer factory accidentally drops his vape pen amidst the bottles careening past him on an assembly line and then attempts to fetch it when the line is temporarily paused by squeezing his hand into a tight space. With closeups on his hand and an off-kilter score from Dan Deacon (and a title of Chili Finger for gosh sake), the film knows you’re just waiting for something gruesome to happen to it. And it does, but in a way that lets you know you’re in the kind of movie that’s going to try to keep you guessing about what could possibly happen next in this rather wacky and very Midwestern story.
Chekov’s finger now officially introduced, we meet the homely married couple Jessica (Judy Greer) and Ron Lipki (Sean Astin) who, after sending their only daughter off to college, find themselves at a Carl’s Jr-esque fast food restaurant called Blake Jr (named after its founder played by John Goodman). Still reeling from their daughter’s departure, Jessica then makes the unwelcome discovery of the titular severed digit in her cup of chili.
This sets off a chain of events that involves: a funny negotiation with Blake’s daughter/executive (Madeline Wise) looking to avoid bad press; Bryan Cranston in full scenery-chewing glory as Blake’s mutton-chopped, war-vet friend and fixer who investigates the Lipkis; increasingly bad decisions; and a cast of quirky characters leaning hard into their Wisconsin accents and Midwestern milieu (shoutout to the Dells reference).
With a light touch and some dark moments, Chili Finger feels like the goofy cousin of A Simple Plan, Fargo, and other ‘90s-style crime thrillers that prove you should never take the money—but if you do, you’re in for a heckuva ride.