*This review was originally written for Movie Mezzanine.
What does one do when life has become so miserable that the only option is to say goodbye to the world? What if even that ability, to take one’s own life, is taken away? That’s the answer director Dru Brown is trying to find in his second feature film, The Suicide Theory. The question is interesting in, well, theory. In practice, it isn’t only left unanswered, but the thought process behind finding a solution for it is so muddled and confused, one wonders why the director pursued it to begin with.
Steven Ray (Steve Mouzakis) is a troubled man who, in the film’s shocking opening sequence, kills a man because he cuts in line at a supermarket line. The source of his violent instincts never becomes clear, apart from the vague notion that aggression is his coping mechanism with grief. The source for this unhappiness is revealed to be a wife who died in a car crash, leaving him permanently scarred and terrified of crossing roads, what with the bitter memory of the accident constantly flashing across his mind.
Three years after her death, Steven has become a professional killer. It is in this capacity that he meets Percival, a man who demands Steven to shoot him in exchange for cash. The reason? Percival’s attempted suicides have all failed, no matter how drastic the measure taken, including jumping off a bridge. Literally bruised and battered, his only option is to hand the proceedings over to an expert. Steven agrees, but on repeated encounters with Percival, the two men begin to have a connection, even as they continue their efforts toward the impending murder.
