Wristcutters: A Love Story (No Spoilers)

Started off great, but lost its way, which is an ironic thing to say about a roadtrip/suicide film.

After Zia kills himself, he finds the afterlife not all that different from living, "just a little bit worse." Color is muted. No one can smile. And everyone in this state of purgatory has "offed" themselves. Zia goes through a mundane existence, working at a pizzeria and hanging out with his buddy Eugene in the local bar, trying to guess how others wound up in the same place.

Then Zia hears that his ex-girlfriend, Desiree, killed herself not long after he did. Zia and Eugene hit the road to find her, and along the way pick up newcomer Mikal, a girl convinced that she is in this wretched state of being by mistake and wants to find the PIC (People in Charge) so she can plead her case and go home.

Wristcutters began as an imaginative black comedy and kept that momentum for the first half of the film. Unfortunately, things delve into the uber bizarre around the middle and never quite get back on track. I know, you're probably thinking "A film about a roadtrip in the suicide afterlife already sounds pretty effing bizarre," and you'd be right except that even though everyone's offed themselves, things are pretty normal. It's easy to see the human qualities in these people, not to mention the irony in their situation.

Things take a turn when the group meets Kneller laying the middle of the road one night. I'm still not sure what Kneller's purpose is in the context of the film, but he ends up being more of a deus-ex-machina than anything else. All the connections I established with the main characters from the beginning broke when the plot went inexplicably outlandish. I can't delve further into it because a.) it may spoil things and b.) I'm not really sure what the hell happened.

Though the second act ruined the film for me, it did give me the thrill of seeing Will Arnett mystically appear as Messiah, a religious cult leader who killed himself and was determined to do it again in the afterlife (some people never learn). Messiah's religious suicide ceremony possessed all the grandeur of a Gob Bluth magic show and I expected to hear "The Final Countdown" start up any minute. It was a shining moment in a bleak plot.

With such a strong beginning, Wristcutters could've gone in several directions that would have been more satisfying than the train wreck of an ending it had to offer, a train wreck that conveniently left the main characters in a better place, leaving me feeling cheated.

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