Mali Elfman
Apple TV
Advertisement
FROM out of nowhere, a chink of light appears. With painful slowness, it grows stronger: we are inching towards a half-open door. Beyond the door, everything seems normal. A little boy plays a game of pretend. At least, that is what we think. Soon enough we learn what is really going on: he is playing cards with his dead father.
Nothing else in Mali Elfman鈥檚 debut feature lives up to this unsettling opening, though there is a sight gag referencing Greek underworld legend that comes close: two would-be suicides rent a car from Charon vehicle rental.
This is Teddy and Rose, played by Rahul Kohli and Katie Parker. They are driving across the US to an appointment with Dr Stevensen (Karen Gillan), who has just provided evidence that some form of ghostly consciousness exists after death and is detectable. More study is clearly needed, and she is looking for volunteers willing to sign up for a painless euthanasia.
Teddy, a Londoner, has spent 10 years trying and failing to make it in the US. Being turned into a pioneer ghost (his transition from life to death monitored with all the latest gear) will at least give his life some meaning. Rose is weighed down by guilty secrets and just wants to be done with it.
Mind you, even Rose isn鈥檛 as nihilistic as the man who, early on in the film, wanders in front of their rental car, and under their wheels, with a note pinned to his chest: 鈥淭hanks for the help.鈥�
Suicides and homicides become common, as heaven beckons and lives lose their preciousness and meaning. 鈥淥ur trained mediums are standing by,鈥� a radio advert announces, offering contact with the newly visible dead. This is a world lost to itself, snared by fantasies of the hereafter.
But what do these newly discovered ghosts really want, as they stream into our world?
Not every haunting is as touching as that of the boy and his dead parent. Rose guzzles bourbon by the bottle to avoid seeing her mother watching her from inside the motel room TV. A friendly cop confesses to a thoughtless on-duty prank that killed a family of five. Not surprising, then, that he thinks 鈥渢hey鈥檙e here to hurt us鈥�. Karma, a hitchhiker Teddy and Rose pick up out in the desert, has her own doubts: 鈥淛ust because we can see them,鈥� she says, 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 mean we understand them.鈥�
It is at this point, about halfway in, that the viewer begins to wonder if this film has bitten off way more than it can chew.
Teddy admits that what he really wants out of his own managed death is for the news to get back to his absentee father: 鈥淚鈥檇 rather kill myself than live the life you gave me.鈥� This isn鈥檛 a bad line, but what follows is horrific, and not in the scary sense: a stage-managed confrontation with Teddy鈥檚 dad through an impromptu therapy session in a filling station.
The script rights itself, but having lost all confidence after this dive, it delivers, in the end, only a low-key retread of Joel Schumacher鈥檚 1990 flick Flatliners. (Judgement awaits; struggle gives life meaning; you know the rest.)
Next Exit is promising, but not good. It warps the world into a strange shape to ask valid and pressing questions about where the value of life resides. But it loses its way. If the writing exhibited half as much commitment as the acting, we might have had a hit.
聽 聽 聽Need a listening ear? : 116123; : 1 800 273 8255; .
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer. Follow him on Instagram at @simon_ings
Simon also recommends鈥�
Philip K. Dick
This 1967 novel imagines a future in which time (or at least some biological processes) move in reverse. People awake in their graves, age backwards and eventually return to the womb.
Douglas Trumbull
A new headset lets you experience other lives 鈥� and deaths. Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood are the glue holding this strange project together.
