Next Exit (2022)

I am not doing this on purpose, but this is another piece of media about people driven by self-annihilation. I heard about this indie movie on the Feeling Seen podcast hosted by Jordan Crucchiola, when the guest was Rahul Kohli, who was promoting this film. It sounded interesting and I was vaguely familiar with the actor as a Twitter lightning rod for his strident opinions on mostly benign topics that somehow hit viral nerves.

Anyway. This film is premised on a world in which a recent scientific discovery pierces the veil of the afterlife, causing everyday people to get windows of interaction with the shades of the dearly departed. The leading researcher in the field is stationed in San Francisco, and is accepting participants in a "right to die" waiver to track them into the afterlife for study. Two volunteers cross paths in a New York car rental and have under a week to get across the country to make their appointments.

This could be framed as a black comedy with the brevity of my description, but it is more like a mirror image of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles", except only in an automobile. The two characters are Blossom Rose, who is haunted by her past and Teddy, who is haunted by his lack of a memorable one. Both are hoping that the opportunity to be a ghost will solve their unresolved selves to be at peace with their respective lives. But Teddy haunts Rose with his optimism about making something of his life by being a pioneerij the study of death. And Rose refuses to live but can't go through with ending her own life, so she determines to push away any hope or connection with others, like a cursed Jonah crying to be swallowed by a whale.

I am intrigued by stories about people wanting to be unusual things, and this one explores what could drive a person to want to become dead, even as they have to sit with this decision while on a long drive with a stranger with the same destination. It takes a while, as that is the nature of car trips, and their respective masks and walls begin to dissolve. They were not always hopeless or full of blustery gallows humor, there are memories at their core that they gradually admit to each other. "I was not always this way, but something happened to me and I was overwhelmed by its shadow. I can't see the light outside this dark veil shutting out sunlight and life. I could have been different, but I am me."

The scenery through the car windows along their journey is lovely and gave me wonderlust. The soundtrack builds quiet moments as these two have to weigh their decision for these to be their final days. There is small stories pondering what life means in the wake of this discovery of a shadowed afterlife. What this means for faith and criminal behavior declines in the curiosity of whether there will be consequences for a life when considering the afterlife as a probable fact.

It is a film about death that speaks honestly on what it means when a person chooses to live rather than to fade into a shade or shadow in a cloud of quiet despair and darkness.