Content warning: suicide.
In his directorial debut “On the Count of Three,” which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Jerrod Carmichael shows a rare prowess for balancing strikingly different tones. Though “On the Count of Three” has echoes of older films, such as “Thelma & Louise” or “Harold and Maude,” Carmichael’s film uniquely finds a hilarious comic undercurrent in the sense of all-pervading desolation felt by its characters.
We are first introduced to Carmichael’s Val and his best friend Kevin (Christopher Abbott, in his second appearance of the festival after “The World to Come”) as they stand in an empty lot behind a strip club, aiming pistols at each other in stark daylight. From the get-go, Val and Kevin have an unspoken bond that, despite the bleakness of this opening image, shows through in Carmichael and Abbott’s gazes they’re moments away from firing on one another, but it’s clear that the two aren’t antagonists. Instead, Va
The Carmichael Show) flexes his directing skills in
On the Count of Three, a black comedy debut about death that showcases his promise as a compelling new filmmaker. But the digressive script (written by
Ramy co-creators and writers Ryan Welch and
Ari Fletcher) does a disservice to the natural chemistry between its two leads, played by Carmichael and
Christopher Abbott.
The first time we see childhood friends Val (Carmichael) and Kevin (Abott), they’re pointing a pair of handguns at each other behind a strip club at ten in the morning. The goal? To kill one another, a lifelong objective of mentally ill, suicidal Kevin, who’s been in and out of mental hospitals since his youth when he first began fantasizing about ending it all. Val, on the other hand, never had such ideations, but recent events in his life, including the realization of a directionless relationship and a dead-end job, have given him a new perspective on the matter.