With his wife out of town for a work trip, unemployed photographer Clay (Clay Tatum) envisages a blissful solitary week of bingeing junk food and trash TV. But a chance encounter with needy former school friend Whit (Whitmer Thomas) puts paid to his antisocial aspirations. A failed actor, Whit is desperate to rekindle a friendship that Clay is not sure ever really existed. And there’s an added complication: Whit is dead. And he has decided to haunt Clay until the end of time.
A shambling, mordant mumblecore-style comedy, The Civil Dead deftly balances the understated humour of discomfort that results from the pair’s starkly contrasting readings of the bond between them against an increasingly uneasy sense of supernatural peril, manifested through smashed crockery, fused electrics and Whit’s sullen, aggrieved face hovering over his sleeping friend.
In selected cinemas and on demand