With the strict lockdown policies and social distancing conditions of the past year, audiences can easily identify with the protagonist’s psychological breakdown in Before I’m Dead. The main character Nolan Cruise is overcome with the same kind of paranoia, claustrophobia, and acute agoraphobia that the world has been dealing with for over the past year. J.R. Sawyers is the brainchild behind this mysterious and gripping film, acting as writer, producer, director, and star. He crafts a mind-bending piece that oscillates between a variety of genres including drama, science fiction, and thriller.
The main character Nolan is trapped inside his old and grungy apartment because he is grappling with the fatal combination of PTSD, guilt, and grief after surviving a mass shooting that took the life of his beloved wife Carla (the beautiful, sweet-natured Camille Montgomery). As the harrowing year of 2020 proved, one can survive living at home with Zoom therapy and home grocery delivery, tools that Nolan utilizes while spending his days conversing with his wife’s ghost, avoiding his complaining downstairs neighbor Otis, (a perfectly curmudgeonous Gary Klavans), and ignoring nagging texts from cryptic friends.
Sawyers has a strong directorial perspective. The flashback scenes of the mass shooting are completely terrifying without being exploitative. In several sequences, when Nolan holds his iPhone camera up, he sees frightening images that are not present in real life. This was a unique concept that highlights the chaos of Nolan’s psyche. Nolan’s television continuously broadcasts Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Last Man on Earth, a reflection of his doomsday existence and mythical belief that aliens have converted his bathroom into an interdimensional portal.
Nolan is caught in a crossfire between his past, present, and future as he continuously relives the fateful date with his wife that turned into a bloodbath. He wrestles with existential questions about his survival and how he could have rewritten the tragic event to save his wife. Sawyers channels the metaphysical spookiness of Donnie Darko as he mixes the elements of space invasions, doppelgangers, time paradoxes, and wormholes into his confusing story. At times the combination of all these plot threads can be overwhelming, but Sawyers effectively wields them to put the viewer inside Nolan’s manic mind. Although the film clearly has a smaller budget, the special effects are convincing and Beetlejuice-esque in their warped weirdness.
The only downside to Before I’m Dead is Sawyers’ flat performance which at times did not seem to match the high emotional stakes of his ambitious screenplay. Yet perhaps his apathetic affect was his way of portraying Nolan’s trauma—namely his disconnection and detachment. He shined more in the role of Nolan’s dark and cunning doppelganger.
Despite its wild, futuristic exterior, at its core Before I’m Dead is an intelligent and piercing exploration of unstable mental health in the wake of gun violence. Survivors of such traumatic events live every day in fear because their idea of normalcy and safety was cruelly stolen from them. Sawyers depicts their lives with compassion and exceptional creativity. He has a grandiose vision that makes Before I’m Dead is a fascinating and mind-boggling watch.