Janice F. Stemen

Barry Johnson is a mild-mannered spreadsheet analyst leading a life of quiet, almost theatrical ordinariness — alarm clocks, chicken BLTs, YouTube videos at his desk. When a woman named Moonflower Fairchild walks into his office for a job interview, something stirs in him that he can't name and can't shake. A connection he can't quite place. A past he may or may not be remembering correctly. As Barry's obsession with Moonflower deepens, the boundary between his waking life and his dreams begins to dissolve. His marriage strains. And a furious man enters his life with grievances both personal and deeply strange. Shot entirely in Cincinnati, The New Hire treats the surreal and the mundane with equal sincerity — a deadpan absurdist comedy in the tradition of early Coen Brothers and Lynch, where ordinary life turns out to be far stranger than it appears.