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Zia's Hell, the afterlife of suicides, is a dry and barren desert where daily existence is the same—the monotony and despair that accompanied him in life now taunts him in death. Nobody can smile, mortal wounds are visible, and Zia's roommate, a lover of cottage cheese, is constantly complaining. He's contemplated a second suicide, we're told through an internal monologue, but intuition tells him the results will be the same, maybe even a little worse. So he finds solace in alcohol. At one of Hell's bars, Zia meets Gelfand (Shea Whigham), a tavern rock-star who died in a peculiar—and, in this abstract society, rare—act of on-stage hari-kari. Now a petulant womanizer, Gelfand seems quite content with his new home; not unusual, considering his entire family preceded him in self-wrought death and now eats around the dinner table—an immigrant adaptation of the Cleavers. In one scene, Zia is invited over for a hearty meal and pleasant conversation, and learns that Gelfand once saved his younger brother from suicide, though inner unrest over his sexuality would drive him to more successful suicide years later. After a chance meeting at the local convenience store, where the short, bare shelves leave much to the imagination, Zia learns that his old girlfriend—the object of his affection, the woman who drove him to suicide—followed him in self-termination, her head craned against the gaping metal lip of a gas stove. This uplifts him and, with the help of Gelfand and his duct-taped car, begins on a journey across the miserable geography of Hell. Along the way they meet Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), a young woman who believes her stay in the endless Great Beyond is a clerical error. Her impassioned search for the People in Charge draws Zia and Gelfand from their chosen route and somehow manages to brighten the dark desolation. A story such as Wristcutters, in which one desperate soul transcends the boundaries of death in search of another, isn't new. In Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, David Niven's war-time pilot falls in love after being lost by Heaven and must plead his case before a court of angels. In Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, a tired angel played by Bruno Ganz falls madly for a circus performer and decides to shed his wings for her. Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come had Robin Williams' Chris Nielsen suffer the brutal scourges of Hell in search of his wife, who killed herself after the untimely death of both her husband and their children. But unlike its predecessors, Wristcutters possesses a glowing dark humor that allows Dukic to get away with many of the film's more bizarre aspects: Mono-second flashbacks to scenes of suicide, including one of a cop who fought in Vietnam; the cavernous space beneath car seats; flat cola. In one scene we discover that, even in purgatory, there is a need for cops and gas stations; in another, we discover that men judge available women based on whether or not their scars are garish and visible, no doubt a reflection on the contemporary art of drunken late-night pick-ups. The narrative on which Wristcutters is based, a paragraph-heavy tale by Israeli superstar Etgar Keret entitled "Kneller's Happy Campers" and included in his first collection of "warped and wonderful" short stories, succeeds in being both teasingly and roguishly funny because Keret adapts the difficulties of everyday life—perpetual bachelorhood, annoying friends, car troubles—into an otherworldly romantic comedy. Transplanting that same humor to film, though, is a challenge—how do you laugh at a suicide, especially when their means of "offing" are revealed so bluntly? The answer is somewhat ambiguous, as the film portrays many suicides, including Zia, as weak-willed and emotionally infertile, while others seem contented in their dull new lives; suicide, its look and feel, is nothing more than an afterthought, a supplement, leaving room for Dukic to insert humor without scarring any dramatic undertones. 
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