Four good things about this indie comedy, which presupposes that the afterlife for suicides is the same as life, only a little worse. The premise is intriguing and ripe. The location filming in desolate urban outskirts and sparsely littered wastes prompted one reviewer to claim "a cross between the Mojave Desert and Trenton, New Jersey". The soundtrack is courtesy of Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony-era Gogol Bordello, plus a bit of Joy Division; a nice surprise. Tom Waits.
Four bad things. The premise is wasted on incurious characters and a flaky, irresolute narrative; thankfully at least the screenplay is too disorganized to accomplish any moralizing. The camerawork is dull and the intentionally muted color palette adds more boredom than atmosphere; David Gordon Green this ain't. The songs are tacked on, not part of an organic whole — study Scorsese (Mean Streets) to learn how to integrate pop songs into the rhythm of editing. Too little Tom Waits.
This is exactly the kind of movie, like post-Clerks Kevin Smith, that can fool the semiliterate into thinking they have good "indie" taste.
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