Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

At the request of the masses who read this site, I have been tasked with reviewing this film. I watched it originally back in 2008 I think, and re-watching it I find the same issues and positives as the first time around.

The premise of the film is as such, obviously playing with the religious angle, in that if one takes their own life they end up in limbo rather than some satisfactory afterlife. As such, we follow Zia a recent inductee into Limbo, who cut his wrists (hence the title). Now Limbo isn't that much different from regular life, aside from some washed out colours, a perpetual inability to smile by it's inhabitants and some off-kilter reality bending oddities just to keep it different.

Now Zia and his pal Eugene (the obvious comic relief in the film) are enjoying their non-lives as best they can, when Zia finds out his old girlfriend might also be a resident of Limbo. Cue roadtrip and enter "cute" hitchhiker Mikal (Shannon Sossamon) who shakes up Limbo. She's convinced she is wrongly a resident of Limbo due to a technicality. So without going further into details, the plot quickly becomes a "roadtrip" movie and aside from the oddities and Limbo and the whole "dead" thing, it is quite frankly a paint by numbers road trip movie.

Now I am sure I will ostracize one of the two readers of this blog by saying this, but this movie isn't THAT great. I will give it props for taking a whole warped twist on the roadtrip movie, but I can not help but feel that it doesn't really do anything with the premise. It's a tough gamble, it was already guaranteed to not be a commercial success because no distributer would let a suicide-centric movie hit the theatres, and the religious masses would no doubt be a tough sell as well. That being said however, if you are going to run with a premise, I feel like it should have gone farther. I get that Limbo is supposed to be just like life but even more mundane, but there are cool aspects that are hinted at. Things like the "miracles" or the beach scene, are interesting and could have been explored further, but instead we get a secondary plot involving a "suicide cult" (ho ho funny!) with Will Arnett and then whole angle that life and death is really just more paperwork and bureaucracy.

Or maybe I didn't get it. Maybe the whole purpose of having a movie set in a boring existence was meant to be boring? A couple of things I have to be honest about though, and this may render my opinions null and void. First of all, I don't like Shannon Sossamon. I find her a weak and wooden actress that was touted as the next "It" girl when she first hit the theatrical stage, but thankfully it would seem that Hollywood realized her ineptitude and she's been reduced to non-roles and indie films instead (something I still wait they would do with Megan Fox). So her role here, which is essentially a self-involved "love" interest, broke the movie for me at the core as I couldn't invest in her as a viable love-interest for Zia. She's in the same category as Zooey Deschanel for me and it's probably a disservice to me as an aspiring reviewer that I can't get past such issues.

Secondly, the suicide angle on a whole, while interesting and a neat twist, doesn't really work for me. I have zero sympathy for suicide in general. It's a selfish act and I can't empathize with it. I didn't really think the whole uplifting angle was warranted without making the world of Limbo something to really abhor. The fact that Limbo was just like reality for the most part, and that there may be a "get out of jail free" card, kinda makes the whole ordeal amount to little more than "meh". It comes across that it's really not THAT big of deal if you commit suicide, because in the end, if you want something enough, you can get it.

I don't know. I figure for that kind of payoff, I better see Divine Comedy level of ambiance and personal growth.


The good: Patrick Fugit as Zia and Shea Whigham as Eugene are enjoyable leads. I wish instead of Michael Cera, Patrick Fugit could get more roles as I can relate to his confident off-beat sardonic inherent nature more than Cera's "Oh look at me I'm awkward and witty in EVERY FRIGGIN FILM". Did I mention that Cera made me not like Scott Pilgrim as much as I wanted to? Anyhow, what else was good? Oh yes, some imagery thrown in like the beach scene. It made you feel dirty and itchy. That kind of imagery was something they could have really run with. I felt like the director watched a Terry Gilliam movie and tried to emulate the wierdness without really getting the weirdness. I see that the film had a $1,000,000 budget, which isn't much by Hollywood standards, but for an indie film it's quite a bit. If you ditched the suicide cult storyline you could have had some more dough to play with imagery. It would be remiss of me to not include Tom Waits, who I also thoroughly enjoy in most everything in. That guy could read the phonebook and it would be interesting. He also appeared recently as the "devil figure" in Terry Gilliam's Doctor Parnassus interestingly enough.

The bad: Shannon Sossamon. Wooden. Not like how everyone jokes Keanu Reeves is wooden but he can still make a decent movie, I mean wooden like why is she in film at all? The premise was interesting as well, but I didn't like how it almost too lightly handled the issue of suicide. It was either too light or not light enough, and without committing to it either way, it feels like a premise they wanted to explore but really were too scared to tackle head on.

Final Thoughts: Overall not bad, but I can't help but feel it could have been a REALLY interesting tale. Hell, ditch the comedic angle entirely (since a lot of the forced jokes didn't pan out anyway) and run with the whole romance and fantasy bits, and you may have a really decent movie.

Add to the vault? Not mine, I get why some people would enjoy it. It's definitely a dark twist on an otherwise conventional story. Does the subject matter automatically make it gold? No. Definitely not. So while I can appreciate other people's interest in it, it is only mediocre for me. E for effort though!