The Civil Dead review – deadpan ghost comedy of wannabes trying to make it LA | Film

Here is a quarterlife-crisis comedy written and performed by YouTube comics Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas; it is shruggingly deadpan and throwaway, but with a real satirical point and it is genuinely and unexpectedly bleak.Tatum plays a version of himself: Clay, a guy who has come to LA to make it as a photographer. He’s had work published but has real problems paying the rent and has got involved in an illegal fake sublet scam. Out of the blue, an old high-school acquaintance appears; this is Whit (Whitmer Thomas), a needling, wheedling guy who has come to LA to break into acting. Whit wants to hang out with Clay but he’s someone that Clay doesn’t especially want to befriend.

What makes it more awkward is that Whit is a ghost. He is actually dead, and only Clay can see him. He cannot walk through walls or float around, but he has the superpower of invisibility, so Clay does warily permit Whit to accompany him to a high-stakes LA poker game to let him cheat – but he has a rising panicky sense that his new ghost-non-pal wants to hang out with him for the rest of his days. Whit says he can’t remember the moment of his death and does not have a clear most-recent memory of his living existence.

Whit’s actual death is not too far from the career death or social death that so many people come to Los Angeles to endure. For his part, Clay himself keeps claiming to be a friend of superstar Andy Samberg who has apparently vaguely promised Clay work taking set photos, work that has not materialised. So the film also invokes the friendship death that former high-school contemporaries experience when they meet up again in their 20s and realise they have nothing in common – and there is also the artistic or creative death experienced by young performers in LA, creating YouTube comedy or doing one-man or one-woman shows but who feel that, like ghostly Whit, no one can hear them. It’s a mordant piece of pessimism.

Here is a quarterlife-crisis comedy written and performed by YouTube comics Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas; it is shruggingly deadpan and throwaway, but with a real satirical point and it is genuinely and unexpectedly bleak.Tatum plays a version of himself: Clay, a guy who has come to LA to make it as a photographer. He’s had work published but has real problems paying the rent and has got involved in an illegal fake sublet scam. Out of the blue, an old high-school acquaintance appears; this is Whit (Whitmer Thomas), a needling, wheedling guy who has come to LA to break into acting. Whit wants to hang out with Clay but he’s someone that Clay doesn’t especially want to befriend.

What makes it more awkward is that Whit is a ghost. He is actually dead, and only Clay can see him. He cannot walk through walls or float around, but he has the superpower of invisibility, so Clay does warily permit Whit to accompany him to a high-stakes LA poker game to let him cheat – but he has a rising panicky sense that his new ghost-non-pal wants to hang out with him for the rest of his days. Whit says he can’t remember the moment of his death and does not have a clear most-recent memory of his living existence.

Whit’s actual death is not too far from the career death or social death that so many people come to Los Angeles to endure. For his part, Clay himself keeps claiming to be a friend of superstar Andy Samberg who has apparently vaguely promised Clay work taking set photos, work that has not materialised. So the film also invokes the friendship death that former high-school contemporaries experience when they meet up again in their 20s and realise they have nothing in common – and there is also the artistic or creative death experienced by young performers in LA, creating YouTube comedy or doing one-man or one-woman shows but who feel that, like ghostly Whit, no one can hear them. It’s a mordant piece of pessimism.