THE STORY – Jimmy wakes up in a bathtub after attempting suicide. Or at least that’s what it looks like… Jimmy is sure this wasn’t his doing, and together with Margot, the 911 operator from the night of the incident, Jimmy sets out to solve an attempted murder in which he’s the only suspect.
THE CAST – Charlie Day, Allison Williams, Giancarlo Esposito, Aya Cash, Jessica Harper, David Krumholtz, & Tony Cavalero
THE TEAM – Peter Warren (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 104 Minutes
“Kill Me” opens with a striking image: a hand submerged in red liquid, which you quickly realize is blood. This visceral beginning immediately shifts to Jimmy (Charlie Day) waking up in a bathtub, and you realize this is a failed suicide attempt, despite deep gashes in his arms. He’s confused; he puts in his EarPods and tells Siri to call 911. Instead, she responds by turning on 911 radio—a scene that may make people think of Alexa playing “Fuck the Police” in Jordan Peele’s “Us”.
“Idk how this happened, I didn’t do this,” he insists. As he bleeds out, we meet Margot (Allison Williams), the 911 operator who stays on the line, reassuring him that help is on the way. Jimmy is adamant he didn’t do this, and there is a palpable fear that he will die. When you think of Charlie Day, you think comedy, so the tone in the beginning here is surprising. After he gets sewn up, the film forces you to question if he is telling the truth. Did he not actually want to die?
The most striking, and arguably frustrating, element of “Kille Me” is the constant, frustrating doubt it sows in the viewer. When a social worker questions him, Jimmy insists he doesn’t know what happened, yet it’s clear he isn’t being believed. Everyone in the room, even his mom, argues with him. This creates a unique tension in which the audience is forced to mirror Jimmy’s own experience: the sheer exhaustion of being diagnosed and not being listened to.
You start to believe he genuinely doesn’t know what happened, but the film constantly pulls the rug out. As he calls the cops to report his own “attempted murder,” the comedy starts to breach the surface. The humor is built entirely around the absurdity of his situation, and Day plays a charming hot mess very well. When he returns home, he walks carefully, not wanting to tamper with evidence that may be there. In a sequence that is both ridiculous and humorous in its persistence, Jimmy searches “how to solve a murder,” and a montage ensues of him getting everything from caution tape to a body suit, number markers, and a Polaroid camera. He finds hair, then realizes it’s his. He finds prints, then realizes they are also his.
The mystery deepens when Margot crosses a confidential line and gets embroiled in Jimmy’s world. Williams’s performance conveys the feeling that something is off with her: her hair is greasy, her skin is pale, and it’s clear her job is sucking the life out of her. You also learn that her past draws a close tie to Jimmy’s present, which is significant to their connection. Their rapport adds to the comedy, starting with her spraying him in the face with deodorant during their first meeting.
Together, they discover that a blacklight reveals his apartment has been wiped clean, and Jimmy never cleans. This is the turning point at which the audience’s intrigue builds. Director Peter Warren pits Jimmy against a mounting list of suspects who would arguably benefit from his absence: bitter former flames, a resentful stepfather, and his own exasperated psychiatrist (Giancarlo Esposito). Yet, the most convincing suspect remains Jimmy himself. The film keeps you teetering on a knife’s edge—is he uncovering a genuine conspiracy, or is the murderer simply his own clinical depression?
What really gets Jimmy’s gears turning is a detail about the sauce—the sauce he always puts on his Cuban rice. That night, there was no sauce, suggesting suspicious tampering. Yet even as he finds “clues,” the constant denials from everyone around him make the audience lose trust in him. It can be argued that this is entirely by design. By making Jimmy an unreliable protagonist, intentional or not, the film makes you feel exactly how he feels: like you’re going crazy.
The dialogue is quite strong here for a comedy, providing depth to the trauma his family has gone through. We learn that his family almost weaponizes the fact that he tried to commit suicide four years earlier, and his sister Alice (Aya Cash), who found him last time, is understandably upset. The film is well written enough to capture the pain of everyone involved and to understand their perspectives. The film also features great camerawork, with close-ups that make the entire experience feel claustrophobic, especially when people make Jimmy doubt himself.
“Kill Me” is a creative look at mental health. However, it ends in a way that makes you question everything all over again. Whether it was wise to portray Jimmy as an unreliable protagonist is up for debate, but it certainly makes for a good murder mystery.
