The Civil Dead (2022) A Mumblecore Shaggy Dog Story with None of the Downsides (Review)

Giving himself a home-made haircut that turns into a “full-on mullet”, Clay – the hero of The Civil Dead, released in UK cinemas this week – can see the hopeful side. His photography business has been struggling: having terrible hair might be the gimmick he needs. The Civil Dead itself has a better plan for lodging in the viewer’s memory. Written by its stars Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas, and directed by Tatum, it initially comes across as another comedy of dysfunctional male friendship. Despite his floundering business, the only item on Clay’s to-do list while his wife is out of town is watching TV. Then his old friend Whit resurfaces, and they enjoy a drunken night which leaves Whit complaining of rigor mortis the morning after. You laugh at Whit’s mistake, then a few moments later it transpires it wasn’t a mistake. In his own splendidly inarticulate argot, Whit is “like, dead. I’m a dead ghost”.

This is no spoiler – it happens about twenty minutes into the film, if that – but it’s a hell of a hairpin turn. Prior to this, The Civil Dead left me wondering if it was too early for a mumblecore revival, although your critic is one of those who’ll argue it’s always too early for that. For the uninitiated, mumblecore was a wave of independent US slacker comedy-dramas that proliferated in the second half of the 2000s; notable figures included Joe Swanberg, the Duplass brothers, Andrew Bujalski and – whatever happened to her, eh? – Greta Gerwig. Barring the more ambitious Bujalski, most of these films had a sitcom morality, where the problems of a man-child protagonist could always be fixed by getting some backbone and moving out of their parents’ house. You’d hardly know, looking at the average Duplass brothers film, that these movies were made during a massive global financial crash which we still haven’t recovered from today.

Before Whit makes his startling revelation, The Civil Dead looks like the most classical example of mumblecore as anything I’ve seen since about 2013. (Thomas had a supporting role in Swanberg’s Uncle Kent, so there is a direct lineage here) The core twist definitely puts it into a different genre, although mumblecore was always open to genre experimentation, even producing a horror scene – inevitably called mumblegore – which Ti West emerged from. The more important distinction is that, compared to the who-cares lo-fi of the original mumblecore films, there are many cared-for and beautiful things in The Civil Dead. Joshua Hill’s cinematography gives the film a gorgeous, hazy early-autumn colour palette, while Max Whipple’s attention-grabbing easy-listening score feels like it’s been imported from a 1960s sitcom take on the same basic concept, which would probably be called My Ghost Pal or something like that.

The modern take on this idea allows for some lacerating topical jokes – there’s a great quip about Joe Rogan – but it also sharpens a social critique that was always too blunt in the original mumblecore generation. Whit’s development is arrested because he’s a ghost, while Clay’s life is at a similar standstill because he’s an elder millennial working in the creative industries. The difference between the two is alarmingly hard to discern, much as Whit’s claim that ghosts experience time at a faster pace than humans only makes him even twitchier and more nervy than he was before. Tellingly, for all Clay complains about his career flatlining, he never considers building an online following. He’s an analogue person who had the misfortune to be born during a digital shift, complete with a not-for-Instagram haircut.

Even if the supernatural twist hadn’t added this extra layer of satire, it would earn its keep purely through joke quality. Thomas and Tatum both started off in the LA-based comedy troupe Power Violence, which means they’re quicker off the mark than the directors’ mates who usually get cast in these things. There are some jokes in here that are presumably scripted, and there are some that feel improvised, but the line between the two feels suitably spectral. In place of the aimless improv that a lot of Apatow-era US comedy films padded their running time with, there’s a premium placed on killer lines. For all the shagginess and shabbiness of its setting and characters evokes mid-2000s Indies, The Civil Dead makes a surprising amount of sense in the modern comedy landscape, with Jim Archer’s Brian and Charles a particularly good point of comparison. They’re both films about shambling, underachieving but still loveable men whose core friendship is supernatural in nature; if you like one, you might well like the other.

Graham’s Archive – The Civil Dead (2022)