Wandering aimlessly between Richard Linklater’s Slacker and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense treads Clay Tatum’s feature debut, The Civil Dead, a curious little film about an out-of-work photographer and the ghost of some guy he barely knew. Despite the routine budget constraints that almost always accompany independent films from first-time directors, this off-kilter buddy comedy works surprisingly well thanks to its likable cast and clever genre subversions. Don’t let this under-the-radar sleeper fool you, though. Underneath its goofy premise and socially awkward characters lies a nearly imperceptible layer of malice that oozes its way in and out of the film’s tone and comedic moments. The Civil Dead is funny all the way up until it unexpectedly isn’t, and even then, it’s still relatable to anyone who’s had that one overbearing friend.
Making friends as an adult can be hard, but Clay (Tatum, as what I can only imagine is a version of himself) doesn’t seem to have any interest in the effort whatsoever. For him, beer, skateboard videos, and his loving wife (Whitney Weir) are plenty. Why go out and complicate things when all of life’s necessities can be found at home, right? To be honest, I’m having a hard time disagreeing with Clay’s logic, but since paying rent is also a necessity, his wife talks him into getting out of the house to take some photos while she’s out of town.
With camera in hand, Clay spends the day wandering the streets of Los Angeles looking for subject matter, but is annoyed when a purple-jacketed weirdo won’t get out of his shot. As it turns out, this weirdo is Whit (Whitmer Thomas), an old high school acquaintance who Clay hasn’t seen in years. After hanging out for a night, Clay is eager for Whit to leave so he can continue his routine of beer and skate videos, but Whit has something else in mind. Did I mention that Whit is dead and Clay is the only person who can see him? Well, Whit is dead, and Clay is the only person who can see him.
What follows is a series of events typical of quirky odd couple stories (plus some really bad hairstyle choices and lots of drunken karate kicks), but The Civil Dead never feels completely at home within the confines of its genre. Although funny throughout, the relationship that develops between Clay and Whit is completely one-sided: Clay wants to be left alone, while Whit wants someone to hang out with and talk to, or haunt, if you will, which results in a rather poignant exploration of loneliness and depression that I didn’t see coming.
Ultimately, the lengths to which Clay goes to free himself of his phantom companion deeply affect Whit on a level Clay seems either unable to understand or is completely indifferent to. Feeling Whit’s pain is easy, but feeling Clay’s annoyance is even easier—at least until the film’s final minutes, at which point your empathy and sympathy for both of them may start doing backflips around each other in an effort to make sense of it all.
As a little indie comedy that could, The Civil Dead is clever enough to stand out from the crowd, and I sincerely hope it does. It’s better made, better acted, more relatable, and, despite its ghost story premise, more believable than almost any romantic comedy ever made. Its runtime may be a bit padded in between the important bits, but when Tatum and company finally get where they need to be, its humor and humanity carry it all the way to the bitter end.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.