Imagine all the worst case scenarios you might associate with the term "indie film," and you'll find most of them on display in David Lee Miller's intolerable feature My Suicide. Overbearing, in-your-face mixed media visuals? Check. Facile approach to "edgy" subject matter? Check. Record label-approved hipster band soundtrack slathered over every scene? Check. Photogenic young cast sure to meet the approval of The Hills demographic? Check. Any sort of heart or insight or recognizable human behavior? Nowhere to be found.
Archie Williams (Gabriel Sunday) is a 17-year-old high school student living in a media-saturated world of his own making. A video camera seemingly permanently affixed to his hand, an array of movie references his most reliable form of communication, Archie is pretty much insufferable from the very beginning of My Suicide. So when we learn he's planning to kill himself on camera for a media class project, it's not the most upsetting news.
Understandably, Archie's teacher is not on board with his concept, although his classmates are intrigued, particularly beautiful Sierra (Brooke Nevin), the poor little rich girl Archie has always had a crush on. Sierra lost her brother in a car accident, and her parents are unfeeling, overmedicated plastic people who give her everything she wants. Naturally, she's suicidal as well. Oh, the pain of the privileged!
Archie and Sierra turn out to be kindred spirits, at least temporarily, and they set about checking items off their bucket list together, which works out great for Archie as Sierra takes his virginity. Just as we begin to suspect they'll decide there might be something to this "life" thing after all, a tragedy hits that sets them both back into a tailspin. Only the gaseous wisdom of special guest star David Carradine can set Archie back on the path to righteousness.
Director Miller gives this Afterschool Special material the full Requiem for a Dream/Natural Born Killers migraine treatment, emptying his box of ProTools to engineer a rapid-fire mix of film, video, animation and computer graphics that some will undoubtedly call "dazzling." All of this only serves to conceal how hollow the story is at the core and how little we care about the characters. Sunday is a skilled mimic, as we learn when Archie does trite re-enactments from The Deer Hunter, The Matrix, Apocalypse Now and Taxi Driver (yes, he actually does the "You talkin' to me" scene, which we all needed to see recreated for the twelve millionth time),but Archie's big emotional moments never ring true. Nothing does in My Suicide, including the tossed-off suggestion that helping others is the cure-all for depression. It would be depressing to think this is what passes for visionary indie filmmaking these days, but fortunately SXSW provides enough counter-examples to ensure that's not the case.
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