If You Should Leave Before Me

How utterly disappointing it is to watch a film implode as it plays out, declining in quality with each passing frame the further one gets into it. Unfortunately, that’s the case with the debut feature from writer-directors B. Robert and J. Markus Anderson, a picture that admittedly starts out strong and engaging but that seriously goes off the rails as it unfolds, despite a few modestly successful attempts at redemption along the way. Mark (Shane P. Allen) and Joshua (John Wilcox) are a gay male couple who serve as case workers for the recently deceased, particularly when it comes to helping them address unresolved baggage from the lives they just departed that is holding them back from successfully crossing over to the next stage of their spirits’ evolution. They do this by crossing through portals that appear within their home, taking them to alternate realities where their clients are stuck. The premise is an intriguing one, to be sure, and the hindrances preventing forward progress that are explored early on in the film do a fine job of examining the kinds of issues that the newly dead may well face as they seek to transition. However, as this release progresses, it becomes bogged down by its own narrative, going off on overlong, arguably less relevant tangents that lack the crisp, insightful dialogue and sharp narrative arcs present at the outset. Shockingly, it even veers into territory that I found patently offensive, making me wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. Besides the picture’s central case worker plotline, it also delves into the emotionally charged relationship challenges of its two leads, but, regrettably, they tend to become overly talky, uninvolving, redundant and unfocused at times, despite starting out as a more engaging aspect of the film than all of the ancillary (and otherwise-easily excised) story elements. It’s almost as if the creators of this work loaded a huge pile of concepts into a hopper and threw it against the wall to see what would stick but not effectively eliminating anything in the process. Such a failing is frequently indicative of the work of first-time filmmakers who lack the experience and wisdom of recognizing the value (and need) of “killing one’s darlings,” no matter how much in love they might with cherished but clearly superfluous cinematic elements. (Sadly, this even became apparent in a post-screening Q&A, when the directors as much as admitted there were ambivalencies in this offering whose existence and inclusion they couldn’t even explain themselves.) While I realize that there is a learning curve associated with the progression of a filmmaking career, it’s essential that new writer-directors recognize this and learn from it when they move on to subsequent projects. But, based on what’s in place here, it’s apparent this filmmaking duo has its work cut out for themselves going forward, particularly when it comes to incisively recognizing what’s important and what isn’t. To be blunt, my rating here is undeniably generous, as I was fully prepared to give it a lower rating while watching it unfold. However, for all of its faults, I must give kudos to this effort’s clever production design (effectively created on a virtually nonexistent budget), its inventive cinematography, a well-intentioned (if somewhat bungled) core premise, its snappy, moderately amusing dialogue (at least at the film’s beginning), and several heart-tugging sequences that help to rescue this release from its own misbegotten ways. But, when one factors in all of the material that should have been removed and that keep the film from otherwise succeeding, the result is a cinematic experience that’s thoroughly exhausting by picture’s end, a quality that nearly prompted me to leave it before the credits rolled.