If You Should Leave Before Me

How utterly disappointing it is to watch a film implode as it plays out, declining in quality with each passing frame the further one gets into it. Unfortunately, that’s the case with the debut feature from writer-directors B. Robert and J. Markus Anderson, a picture that admittedly starts out strong and engaging but that seriously goes off the rails as it unfolds, despite a few modestly successful attempts at redemption along the way. Mark (Shane P. Allen) and Joshua (John Wilcox) are a gay male couple who serve as case workers for the recently deceased, particularly when it comes to helping them address unresolved baggage from the lives they just departed that is holding them back from successfully crossing over to the next stage of their spirits’ evolution. They do this by crossing through portals that appear within their home, taking them to alternate realities where their clients are stuck. The premise is an intriguing one, to be sure, and the hindrances preventing forward progress that are explored early on in the film do a fine job of examining the kinds of issues that the newly dead may well face as they seek to transition. However, as this release progresses, it becomes bogged down by its own narrative, going off on overlong, arguably less relevant tangents that lack the crisp, insightful dialogue and sharp narrative arcs present at the outset. Shockingly, it even veers into territory that I found patently offensive, making me wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. Besides the picture’s central case worker plotline, it also delves into the emotionally charged relationship challenges of its two leads, but, regrettably, they tend to become overly talky, uninvolving, redundant and unfocused at times, despite starting out as a more engaging aspect of the film than all of the ancillary (and otherwise-easily excised) story elements. It’s almost as if the creators of this work loaded a huge pile of concepts into a hopper and threw it against the wall to see wha...