#POLISH PREMIERE | horribly funny | ghosts | american indepentent film | midlife crisis | fringe | comedy | buddy movie | USA | needy buddy | friendship | cringe | failed actor | mystery | heart warming | simple life | twist | outsiders | dark humor

THE CIVIL DEAD

comedy | USA | 2022
World premiere: Slamdance Film Festival 2022
Polish premiere: Splat!FilmFest

AN INDEPENDENT BUDDY MOVIE WITH A GRAIN OF HORROR AND DARK HUMOR

Clay is not really a gifted photographer. He is temporarily unemployed and tries to hide his financial problems and developing depression from his wife. While she’s is away, Clay, feeling more and more desperate and frightened, tries to somehow get his life back together.

By coincidence, he meets an irritating and needy friend, Whit – a frustrated actor who, just like Clay, has no clue of what to do with his life. Whit also holds a secret that guarantees you a plot twist you would never expect. Despite a turn in the course of events, in a rather unexpected duo (because they would never be friends if it weren’t for this accidental meeting), Clay and Whit decide to solve Clay’s problems and, of course, cause even more of them.

Clay Tantum’s movie (coincidence of names fully intended: he plays the main character and wrote a script in cooperation with Whitmer Thomas, who plays Whit), filled with sadness and irony, represents an independent cinema, which will both warm and cross your heart. None of the characters is the sharpest tool in the shed: armed with their dreams they just try to find their place in the world, but they don’t have enough talent and determination. That’s why facing reality turns out to be painful. Their relation, at first continued out of necessity rather than out of willingness, quickly turns into a real a friendship that will touch sensitive, rarely tuned strings in the soul of the greatest brutes.Not because it’s sentimental, but because it is created out of necessity and connects two outcasts.

While watching ‘The Civil Dead’, don’t count on fret and jump scares. Instead, prepare yourself for the strange and slow-paced movie, filled with dark humor, where the characters mainly talk, but they talk in such a way that the two hours of watching will pass in a heartbeat. And in the meantime you will get reminded why you love the American independent cinema. And why some of your friends should be avoided.

director: Clay Tatum
screenwriter: Clay Tatum, Whitmer Thomas
cast: Clay Tatum, Whitmer Thomas, Robert Longstreet
photography: Joshua Hill
music: Max Whipple
editor: Clay Tatum
language: English
subtitles: Polish
duration: 1h 44min
recommended age: 16+