On what they see as the last day of their lives, two suicide-obsessed friends support each other through the traumas that are behind their mental states in a dark comedy from Jerrod Carmichael.

It's subject matter that is going to be too dark for many viewers, but as a film it harkens back to the wave of American indie cinema of the early 1990s and shares wry moments and some guilty chuckles.

Carmichael has a decent career as an actor behind him, including a Transformers film and the Zac Efron comedy Neighbors, and apart from directing his own stand-up, he drew rave reviews for the direction he gave to the polarising 2018 HBO special for the comedian Drew Michael.

Perhaps it was those rave reviews - his New York Times review for that film is career-making - that have some big companies the likes of Anapurna Pictures and Orion throwing their money into this, his narrative feature film directing debut.

The film opens with Val (Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott) pointing guns at each other in a strip club car park. The men aren't enemies, they're playing out a mutual suicide pact, offering to end each other's miseries.

The film flashes an "earlier that day" and the rest of the film follows the two men as their day moves back to that dramatic moment, beginning with Val making a half-hearted attempt to end his life in the bathroom of his miserable workplace, but stopping when one of his colleagues starts chatting to him over the cubicle door.

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Val tracks his pal Kevin down in the mental facility he has been confined to and busts him out through a bathroom window.

The boys are now on the run, both unpacking the misery or malaise they feel, and they decide on a day of action, including practising their shooting at a gun range, and visiting the clinic of Dr Brenner (Henry Winkler), the child psychiatrist responsible for Kevin's mental issues, with murderous intent.

It is frankly hard to write about this topic. On the TV news, the word suicide is not mentioned and there is so much nervousness behind any article on the subject - there will be a note at the bottom of this review pointing readers to help, in case it is needed.

So there's a certain amount of balls required to make a feature film that purports to be a comedy about suicide. The film was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival last year, mid-COVID, and has been waiting for, I want to say, a less dark world to be released into.

Carmichael's approach is interesting, and I feel that were I to ignore that the film has been marketed with the term "black comedy" I might have felt this was quite a wry and ironically amusing little drama.

His low budget invites a thoughtful drama has both the look and feels of one of the American indie flicks of the early 1990s that begat the Tarantinos and Jamusches of the world, all grungy locales and thought-out dialogue, with the screenplay from Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch employing many of the traditional buddy comedy tropes in these dark environs.

Carmichel the director strains against this. It's like anti-comedy is his shtick, but what a talent Carmichael is - as the film's other lead performer, he brings a propelling energy.

Abbott was a standout among the stellar cast of the television hit Girls, and in his bleached curls and beard it took me some time into the film to realise who the performer was. His soulful eyes draw you into the idea there is a deal of turmoil going on behind them.