In C.O.G., director Kyle Patrick Alvarez crafts a dryly comic and sharply observed drama about a young man's misguided quest for authenticity. Jonathan Groff plays David, a buttoned-up, Ivy League-educated snob who abandons his comfortable life to work on an apple farm in rural Oregon, believing the manual labor will teach him something real about the world. What he finds instead is a series of humbling and often absurd encounters with the locals, including a gruff, no-nonsense boss (Corey Stoll) and a deeply religious fellow worker (Denis O'Hare) who challenges David’s intellectual superiority. As the summer wears on, David’s carefully constructed persona begins to crack under the weight of boredom, loneliness, and the harsh realities of farm life. Blending deadpan humor with moments of genuine discomfort, the film subverts the typical coming-of-age story, forcing its protagonist to confront his own condescension and fragility. With a sharp script and a standout performance from Groff, C.O.G. is a quietly devastating portrait of a young man learning that self-discovery rarely follows a tidy plan.