Just Before I Go (2014)

The movie begins with Ted (Seann William Scott) drowning in a lake. It's OK, though, this is what he intended to do. From there, the movie does a quick rundown of the things that went wrong in his life as a kid and that, as an adult, he doesn't seem to have any purpose or drive. So, he decided to kill himself, after returning to his hometown to settle some old scores.

Any hope of this being a darkly comic revenge film vanishes like a fart in the wind when he's caught cursing out his 7th grader teacher (now a barely aware old woman) by her granddaughter Greta (Olivia Thirlby), who blackmails Ted into letting her film his bucket list activities in exchange for not alerting the police to his intent to end his life.

At which point the movie turns into a string of events of Ted finding himself caught up in the lives of people he apparently did not feel would care about him. His nephew can't accept he's gay, and actually helps beat the shit out of his boyfriend rather than face it (which seems like something the couple need to work through, but we don't see it.) Ted's old bully is a widower with a special needs son, so he and Ted end up drinking and planning a patricide together (which barely gets off the ground, another missed chance for dark comedy.)

It's one of those movies where people announce their feelings and hang-ups in dramatic speeches like, "I never had a boyfriend because I never expected a guy to stick around!" There's a whole thing where Ted's sister-in-law acts out her resentment towards her brother by pretending to be a sleepwalker who enters Ted's room and begins masturbating in front of him. Which is kind of fucked up in a way I found more sad than hilarious. But if the idea is Ted needing to realize he's not alone and his life does matter, that's an odd way to go about it. That would make me more likely to commit suicide, simply to not be in the middle of that bizarre marital Cold War.

Despite my complaints, there's a core of potential here. The opening flashback establishes Ted and his dad wanted to find the Nessie-like cryptid said to haunt the local lake. So I assumed Ted might put that on his list of things to do. Finish what he and his old man started, then off himself, but run into a variety of complications along the way. Like not knowing how to scuba dive or operate an underwater drone, which would force him to interact with people and realize he had connections if he only accepted them or something. Same general endpoint, but much more interesting (to me) route.