Slacker comedy The Civil Dead is a surprisingly bleak slice of satire from acting and comedy duo Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas. Tatum plays a version of himself, also called Clay, who in this film is a mostly unsuccessful photographer with a terrible haircut cheating his way to earning some cash by pretending to lease his own apartment, asking prospective renters to pay him an application fee.
While roaming some wasteland taking photographs Clay stumbles upon Whit, a former high-school buddy. This chatty and cheerful bloke insists on “hanging out” only to reveal, after a night of catching up, that he is a ghost and that only Clay can see him. So the set up for the movie is established, with Clay having to decide what to do with this enthusiastic new friend who won’t leave him in peace.
The laws governing what Whit can and can’t do add to some of the comedy (and ultimately drama) here. Whit can’t walk through walls or make things move (except, perhaps, when he’s very angry). He has to wait for Clay to open a car door for him so he can take a seat. But his invisibility to others does come in handy during a high-stakes card game.
It’s clear though that Clay has no desire to utilise his new friend’s presence, and indeed the thought of Whit hanging around indefinitely starts to worry him. And so the film meanders towards a tragic climax. This is not a rip-roaring riot of a film where ghost and living human get up to all kinds of high-jinks. Sure there are a few belly laughs, and occasionally the films edges into something a little more sinister, but for the most part The Civil Dead is as laid back as Clay himself with some improvised-feeling scenes that have an early Woody Allen movie feel about them.
While there may be some echoes of Sixties British TV series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), and The Sixth Sense obviously, The Civil Dead doesn’t focus on the supernatural here either. Rather, this is an often uncomfortable odd-couple comedy that says something about life in Hollywood itself and the desperation of those who go to the city in search of fame and fortune, only to vanish and never be heard from again.
The Civil Dead is in selected cinemas and on demand 19 January 2024.
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