Sometimes I Think About Dying: What If The Office Wasn't Trying To Be Funny?

By Chris Knight

Rating: B-

Sometimes I Think About Dying dares to ask the question: What if The Office wasn’t trying to be funny? And what if Pam was painfully shy, and Jim damaged from two previous marriages, and no one ever made a raised-eyebrow face at the camera?

That’s pretty much what you get from this low-key film from director Rachel Lambert, which stars Daisy Ridley — doing a passable northwestern American accent, though to be fair she says very little — and Dave Merheje, a Canadian standup, dialing back the funny for the sake of the film’s drama.

Merheje plays Robert, newest employee at the undefined office where Carol (Marcia DeBonis) is retiring and plans to take a cruise. In the early scenes, Lambert nails the sense of bad lighting, forced bonhomie, and cumbrous conversations that are the hallmarks of office life. Someone even makes a joke about enjoying awkward silences.

Fran (Ridley) is an awkward silence on legs. Living alone without even a cat for company, her dinner one night consists of cottage cheese on toast and a single glass of red wine, which she consumes while standing at the table.

And yet just when I thought I had her character pegged, she surprised me. I thought this might be one of those movies where we know someone is on the spectrum because their fridge is filled with exactly one type of food, and they are unable to relate meaningfully with other humans.

But thankfully, no. Fran is simple, but she’s not plot-device symptomatic. And when Robert tentatively asks her to a movie and then out for dessert, her reactions are not those of a screenwriter’s idea of a pathology.

And yet, this is about as far as the film was able to take me. Sometimes I Think About Dying is based on a short of almost the same title (it’s got a comma) from 2019, which is based on a 2013 play called Killers, which featured two homicidal maniacs missing from this version.

With three writers in addition to the director, it feels like there were several competing vectors for the movie to take, and we wind up with none of them. I mean, I get that it’s meant to evoke stagnation, but there just isn’t enough reveal to keep us engaged.

A confession of sorts: Sometimes, I too think about dying. Not in the way that Fran does, her body laid out in a mossy bower, a not-too-gruesome mark upon her forehead.

It’s more a realization that my days are numbered, even if that number is (I hope) still in the many thousands. And it often strikes me, fleetingly, while watching a movie.

All of which is to say that I imagined I’d feel a certain kinship to this one. But sometimes, sometimes isn’t enough.

Sometimes I Think About Dying. Directed by Rachel Lambert. Starring Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje, and Marcia DeBonis. In theatres February 9.