An absurdist comedy explores the post-suicide experience

"Wristcutters: A Love Story" is a scruffy absurdist comedy set in a limbo where suicides go after killing themselves.

The joke is that this limbo, which might be Bakersfield, or Barstow, is far worse than the bleak world they thought they were leaving.

It's not much of a joke, though, and it wears increasingly thin as it takes three dead characters (Patrick Fugit, Shea Whigham, Shannyn Sossamon) on a road trip through purgatory in an effort to find someone in a position of authority. The girl wishes to lodge a formal complaint, claiming she didn't kill herself on purpose, but merely overdosed. Ho, ho, ho.

Writer-director Goran Dukic, adapting an Etgar Keret novel, may be too successful in establishing suicideland as a fate worse than death. It really is an empty, dreadful place. And it's really no different from your average exurban wasteland, so we don't really have the sense that we're in an otherworldly, limbolike place.

In a strange way, the movie resembles Sean Penn's road movie "Into the Wild," especially when its wandering outcasts settle among a band of undead hippies known as "the happy campers."

A noticeable difference is most of the actors aren't as good, or as appealing (no Hal Holbrooks, Vince Vaughns or Catherine Keeners).

The happy campers are led by indie staple Tom Waits, who may actually be in limbo, at least until Jim Jarmusch makes another movie.

There is some value in the movie's message - never kill yourself just because you're jilted or bored, because you might end up in a place even more lonely and tedious. If that is your fear, you probably shouldn't see "Wristcutters." *

Produced by Adam Sherman, Chris Coen, Tatiana Kelly and Mikal P. Lazarev, written and directed by Goran Dukic, music by Bobby Johnston, distributed by Autonomous Films.