This week on Story Punk, we explore director Michael Duignan's The Paragon, a microbudget New Zealand sci-fi comedy that somehow pulls off psychic training, cosmic stakes, and surprisingly warm character growth on the kind of budget most movies spend on one lunchtime shrimp platter.

After a hit-and-run leaves Dutch (Benedict Wall) technically dead for six minutes, he becomes obsessed with finding the driver and getting revenge. But once he teams up with the mysterious psychic coach Lyra (Florence Noble), the story swerves into telelocation, astral weirdness, interdimensional power plays, and a looming threat tied to a reality-bending object known as “the Paragon.”

We break down why the film works so well: its deadpan tone, its trippy DIY visual style, and the way it flips the usual revenge fantasy into something more human, empathetic, and oddly sweet. They also talk about the film’s retro-psychedelic vibe (part ‘70s fever dream, part ‘90s synth haze), its charmingly scrappy filmmaking tricks, and why this tiny movie ends up feeling surprisingly big.