First Review

Wristcutters: A Love Story

2006

Director: Goran Dukic

I had heard from different people to watch this movie and wanted to see it.  It is based off a novella entitled Kneller’s Happy Campers. Wristcutters is a film about the afterlife specifically for people that have committed suicide. It starts off with a young man cleaning his messy house and then slitting his wrists in the bathroom. We are quickly brought into a strange world that isn’t heaven or hell and life is eerily similar to the real lives of the living except no one can physically smile. Everyone there has “offed themselves” as it is commonly referred to in the film. There are police officers, restaurant workers, mechanic shops, and everything you would expect in life except they’re dead and they have the scars to prove it. Most people are curious about the people around them and how they killed themselves, such as people in real life wonder, but are afraid to ask. There is even a reunited family living together because they have all committed suicide. Most things in the film are a little grayer than usual but it doesn’t overpower you with the idea that things here are dead and everything is horrible. It is the story of the man from the beginning, Zia, searching for his girlfriend who he has found out had recently killed herself too. Traveling with his friend Eugene, they come across Mikal, a beautiful young girl trying to find the people in charge of the operation and get back home, claiming she is there by mistake. We find out she overdosed on drugs and technically didn’t voluntarily kill herself. It is a strange world created for the audience where Tom Waits runs a camp to help the people suffering there. The characters are bizarre and loveable and you don’t pity them, instead you are forced to feel what they have felt and try to understand them as well as suicide as a whole. I was pleasantly surprised by this film. The acting was honest and true to the characters and the plot had unexpected turns as well as enjoyable twists. It has a great ending that is satisfying and at the same time hopeful. It was a quirky little film that got you to think and entertained you at the same time. I love the people at the camp and the relationships that form in the film, such as Eugene and a mute Eskimo girl, as well as the undeniable inevitable attraction between Zia and Mikal. I would recommend it to other people who enjoy dark comedies and dry, witty humor. For a film about the dead, it had a lot of life to it, bringing to light the important things we take for granted. 

Julie Angelicola