Movie Review: Wristcutters: A Love Story

I wanted to see Wristcutters: A Love Story on the big screen, but it wasn't in theaters long enough for me to catch it. I'm not even sure how I heard of it, since it was released with very little advertising. But once I did, I was intrigued. What more could a depressed waiter want than a dark comedy about a man who commits suicide and goes on a bizarre odyssey in a twisted afterlife? Wristcutters felt like an independent film, with a relatively low budget and no big-name actors. It was sometimes funny, and sometimes sad - and always very weird.

Wristcutters begins with the protagonist, Zia (played by Patrick Fugit), cleaning his room. After tidying up and watering the plants, Zia goes into the bathroom and slashes his wrists with a razor blade, motivated by a bad breakup. The film fades to Zia (with nasty scars on his wrists) getting on with his life in the hereafter, a place just for suicides. Of this afterlife Zia narrates: "Who could think of a better punishment, really; everything's the same here, it's just a little worse." He's right; everything is dingy and dumpy, and things don't work right. People are weird and ugly, and bear visible signs of their deaths, like scabbed-over bullet wounds to the head. The landscape seems comprised of endless desert, and nobody ever smiles. The night sky doesn't have stars. And yet there are cities, and jobs, and bars, and roommate troubles, just like in the lives these people have left behind.

It is revealed that Zia is still stuck on his ex-girlfriend, Desiree. While having a beer in a drab bar and playing a game trying to guess how people "offed" themselves, Zia befriends Eugene (Shea Whigham), a comically bad Russian rock musician who killed himself by pouring beer on his electric guitar onstage. Zia eventually runs into an acquaintance who tells him that Desiree has also killed herself. Zia resolves to find her, and talks Eugene into a road trip.

This trip provides some good buddy comedy moments, and introduces a strange plot point about there being some kind of inter-dimensional black hole under the passenger's seat of Eugene's car. The two pick up a cute hitchhiker named Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), who goes around defacing signs to "make this place a little less depressing," and who is looking for the "people in charge" because she feels she was sent there in error. Zia finds a clue as to Desiree's location, but it turns out to be false.

The trio happens upon a strange encampment run by a man named Kneller (Tom Waits), who is searching for his lost dog. This place is full of bizarre characters, and odd little "miracles" occur often. Eugene meets a love interest, and Zia begins to fall for Mikal; it is revealed that her death was from a heroin overdose, and thus was not intentional.

Kneller finds his dog and Zia finds Desiree at a nearby cult compound, where they had apparently all committed suicide like the Heaven's Gate cult in their previous life. The charismatic leader kills himself again to prove he will return, when agents in white (Kneller among them) appear and break the crowd up and start taking people away, including Mikal. Eugene, before heading up north with his girl, reveals that Mikal's case was reviewed, and she was sent back to the world of the living. The film looks like it's going to conclude with Zia driving away alone, but thanks to an unlikely yet forgivable twist, it ends on a more pleasant note.

While this film definitely has its funny moments, it's funny in a subtle way. The comedic element is darkened by the depressing setting of the film, and by occasional flashes of how certain characters committed suicide. These are very brief, almost like the little flashbacks in Family Guy, and they aren't excessively graphic, but they are sad. For example, when Mikal explains her overdose, it cuts to a scene of her dead in a car with a needle in her arm. Another one shows a girl Zia meets in the bar with her head in the oven; the camera then pans to a little note that reads "Are you sorry now?" These inject some real emotion into a film that is intentionally under-acted.

Let me be clear, that's no knock on the acting in Wristcutters. The characters were nearly always reticent because they are living in a joyless purgatory, and also just to add to the overall weirdness of the film. But I thought the actors were more than effective in their roles. I was especially fond of Eugene, who was a great deadpan character. Nearly all of this film's cast has done television work and minor movie roles, but none of them are really what you'd call leading men or ladies. And that's kind of cool. It's nice to see some relative unknowns, as opposed to, say, Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson, who, while entertaining, tend to ham it up and play the same character time and again.

On the whole, I really enjoyed Wristcutters. It was a risqué, original film that had the right blend of funny and disturbing to create a true dark comedy. The acting was great given the context of the story, and the movie did a nice job of building atmosphere. While probably not a great film for kids, people who are overly sensitive to the aforementioned disturbing subject matter, or people who only go for the latest "action vehicles", Wristcutters is surely worth a look for the open-minded.