Film Review: A Film With Me In It

Film With Me In It (2008)Starring stand-up comedian Dylan Moran of Blackbooks fame. A darkly comic tale about a dissolute scriptwriter and a dejected actor who become unwittingly drawn into a labyrinthine mess when several people experience bizarre accidental deaths in their flat. Fearing that they will be unfairly pegged as murderers they attempt to escape their predicament by re-writing the day’s events as if it were a film. As the body count mounts, they pitch ideas back and forth desperately searching for a way out. Stars Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Amy Huberman and Keith Allen.

Starring: Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Amy Huberman, Keith Allen

Directed by: Ian Fitzgibbon

Runtime: 83 minutes

Studio: Element Pictures

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Review:  A Film With Me In It

It’s a tough old life for struggling actor, Mark (Mark Doherty), in this dark but amusing comedy. Not only is he not landing acting jobs, his relationship with his girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) is fragile to say the least, while their landlord, Jack (Keith Allen) is breathing down their necks for rent. Mark also has to look after his disabled brother David (David O’Doherty) so let’s say he has a lot on. Mark and Sally need many repairs to their flat but Jack refuses to do anything until he gets the rent. Things take an amusing if somewhat macabre turn when a ceiling light falls and kills David. If that isn’t bad enough, Jack finally turns up to do some repairs, and proceeds to fall off a stool while changing a light bulb and ending up dead with a screwdriver in his neck. It doesn’t end there. Sally returns home, sees David, collapses and also ends up landing awkwardly and killing herself!

Mark is in serious trouble now with three bodies in the flat but he has a friend and neighbour, Pierce (Dylan Moran), to turn to for help. Pierce is a screenwriter and sees this bizarre sequence of events as implausible to say the least, even if it happened in a film. Drawing on his knowledge of how films with death and murder in should go, he and Mark try to orchestrate a story to explain away these three accidents. Even though we know Mark has done nothing wrong you will sympathise with him when eventually faced with a police officer that unexpectedly turns up at the flat. How will Mark and Pierce find a way out of this scrape?

A Film With Me In It is very dark but it is also funny as well. Doherty and Moran are a great team with Moran delivering a far more resourceful character than the incompetent Bernard Black from the wonderful comedy, Black Books. Though the three deaths stretch credibility somewhat, even Mark and Pierce can’t believe it, the film just becomes funnier with each scene and you start to fear for anyone that comes near Mark’s flat. This is akin to Shallow Grave but without anyone of Christopher Eccleston’s cunning in disposing of bodies.

A Film With Me In It was a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t heard anything about it when it was first released but I think it hasn’t earned the plaudits it deserves. It is very dark in the subject matter and won’t be to everyone’s tastes but seeing Mark go from struggling actor to potential triple murder suspect without lifting a finger is just bizarre and hilarious. Doherty and Moran make a memorable double act and carry this one home with some assurance.

Verdict: 4/5