Two friends damaged by abusive childhoods. One of them is in a psych ward after attempting suicide. The other is paralyzed by his own emotional stasis. Neither wants to live, so why not help each other out? A suicide pact is not the most obvious premise for an indie comedy, though as a hook, it’s certainly unique. The film is directed by comedian Jarrod Carmichael, his feature debut. It aspires to create genuine laughs from this bleak scenario. More so, it’s reaching for a very allusive sweet spot: make a funny suicide comedy that avoids glib affirmations; portray the crushing pain of depression without cheating the portrayal. It’s quite an ambitious goal, one I’m not sure the film achieves, but it does make an earnest attempt.
The two friends are played by Carmichael and Christopher Abbott. Abbott has been a standard presence in indie films (and the HBO series Girls) for the last decade. In lead roles like James White in 2014, he’s displayed a kinetic unpredictability. Sensitive men with short fuses seem to be his specialty. In Count of Three, he plays Kevin, a suicidal young man whose struggles with depression have persisted since he was eight years old. In an early scene, he explodes at a doctor in the psych ward who vows to help him overcome his demons. His reply is simple: with all the doctors and psychiatrists he’s seen throughout his life, if help was possible, wouldn’t one of them have been able to do it by now?
Carmichael plays Val, Kevin’s best friend who quits his job and abandons his girlfriend when he has an epiphany that he no longer wants to live. Visiting Kevin at the ward, he convinces his friend to escape, only to then reveal the full extent of his plan: he wants to kill himself, and he wants to help Kevin kill himself too. Being faced with the prospect of certain death – even after attempting suicide earlier that week – Kevin is hesitant. He decides he needs one more day, some free time to settle some scores before ending it all. Val isn’t convinced but obliges his friend. With their final day ahead of them, the friends attempt to resolve some of the worst traumas of their childhood. In doing so, their death pledge is validated and repudiated in equal measure.
Some of their activities are sinister (visiting one of Kevin’s childhood doctors (Henry Winkler) with murderous intent) while others are more frivolous (visiting a former job at a dirt bike track and doing a few laps). Val ignores messages from his girlfriend, Natasha (Tiffany Haddish), while checking in on his abusive father (JB Smoove) to stand up for himself and the victim he once was. They go from place to place without much meaning or inspiration, instead allowing the instincts of their manic energy push them one way or another. Writers Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch waste no time showing the two’s collective instability, with even their suicide pact stalling with disorganized side quests that lead to nowhere. There are tender moments of whimsy and affection between the two friends, but even their most unhinged actions are tinged with a sad tension, knowing their ultimate end.
This is incredibly grim stuff, and I don’t think On the Count of Three manages to be as funny as it wants to be. What works most is Abbott’s performance, which is another in his line of unbalanced emo boys wrestling with their own worst instincts. Kevin is the only character able to deliver the film’s harrowing laugh lines with an active humor, and it’s his energy that allows the film to carry itself despite the dire subject matter. As director, Carmichael wants to avoid cheating the darkest aspect of these characters. As an actor, he struggles to match Abbott’s relentlessness, to capture the delirium of a man living the last day of his life, worrying about consequences that are theoretically not coming. For a directorial debut, Carmichael establishes that he is unafraid of provocative material, but his handling proves to be imprecise, which is unfortunate considering the premise.
Directed by Jarrod Carmichael