John's Movie Musings

All too often, I go into Indie films hoping to discover the next Juno or Once. That's not a bad hope to have, but it's "hope" and not "expectation" because most Indie films are crapfests.

Take Wristcutters: A Love Story, for instance. Following the Independent Film bylaws, it tackles a subject Hollywood won't touch - suicide. OK, I'm cool with that. It's good to explore some darker themes in the safety of film to help make sense of it. But only an Independent filmmaker would look at suicide and say, "Hey, this would make a great love story." Idiots.

Yes, I know Romeo & Juliet did it. Shut up. That was a well told tragedy. Wristcutters is a tragedy. See the difference?

The movies opens with the titular suicide and the hero's death. However, he wakes up somewhere between Heaven and Hell. Think more New Jersey than Purgatory. Wherever it is, only suicide victims live there. He soon hears that his girlfriend killed herself shortly after his funeral, and so begins his quest to reuinite with his true love.

"But John," you say. "What about all the emotional strife that caused him to kill himself?" Yeah, that's why this movie sucks. You basically have this quirky love story set in New Jergatory that completely ignores the fact that every character killed themselves. Actually, I take that back. Every character explains how they killed themselves, but no one explains why. Maybe it's just me, but when Mr Big Emotional Elephant is in the room, I think a story should deal with him.

Bah. Whatever. You've probably never heard of this movie. My apologies for ruining that.

Grade: D