In Next Exit, confirmation of an afterlife doesn’t solve our problems in the current one
Katie Parker and Rahul Kohli wrestle with a future that may or may not repair their troubled present in this low-key sci-fi film
Film Reviews Exit
Human mortality, and the collective knowledge of our limited time on Earth, informs storytelling (and certainly life) on almost every level. But if an afterlife was scientifically confirmed—even if not in very specific terms—how might that change one’s decision-making?
That notion underpins Next Exit, which debuted at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, filtering a bit of downbeat philosophical noodling through a tried-and-true relationship dynamic, imprinted on the road trip genre.
The feature film writing and directing debut of Mali Elfman (daughter of Danny, cousin of Jenna) takes place in a world where the existence of ghosts has been confirmed, thanks to video evidence from Dr. Stevensen (a cameoing Karen Gillan, adopting a deeper speaking register clearly meant to evoke Elizabeth Holmes). This revelation has freed up some people from the fear of death, even as both government and organized religion struggle with how to adapt to the assisted-suicide business model of Stevensen’s company, Life Beyond.
It’s this pitch that in fact bonds Rose (Katie Parker) and Teddy (Rahul Kohli), two suicidal New Yorkers whose long-term despondency has led them to sign up and head west to be amongst the first wave of volunteers in this pioneering “research.” After initially meeting during a screw-up at the car rental agency, the pair learn of each other’s impending appointments and decide to share a rental car on a cross-country drive to San Francisco.
Along the way, they cross paths with an assortment of characters, including tire-changing priest Jack (Tongayi Chirisa); PTSD-addled barfly John (Tim Griffin); and optimistic hitchhiker Karma (Diva Zappa). Goodnatured bickering (Teddy is talkative and wants to make his last trip a pleasant one; Rose is brusque and all-business, more invested in keeping a good pace) slowly gives way to a more functional relationship. This culminates in meet-ups with parties tied up in some of their respective trauma: Teddy’s estranged father Joe (Marcelo Tubert), and Rose’s sister Heather (Rose McIver) and brother-in-law Nick (Nico Evers-Swindell). Will any of these interactions impact their scheduled dates with death, however?
Next Exit plugs into some of the same existential questioning as Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, but takes a decidedly less bleak worldview. If the latter’s takeaway is, “Hell is other people,” the former could reasonably be described as, “Maybe another hell is a little better than this hell,” followed by a shrug emoji.
There have been a number of what might be characterized as suicide-forward projects in this still-young century, and while few of them actually lean fully and heavily into the complicated nature of their subject matter (the Netflix series Thirteen Reasons Why and Mark Pellington’s I Melt With You being arguably the most notable exceptions), Next Exit deserves credit for grounding the isolation and despair of its characters in believable pain.
The film doesn’t wink at or downplay its characters’ past attempts to kill themselves, and if their outward demeanors don’t present as the “typical” manifestations of suicidal depressives, that’s an important and welcome respite from the way in which mental health struggles are still too often given broad-brush treatment in fictionalized presentations.
Elfman perhaps grapples a bit with world-building, which is admittedly difficult to achieve in thumbnail fashion, given the road-movie conceit; graffitied billboards and a couple of talk radio inserts feel somewhat reductive in terms of sketching things out. Next Exit clearly isn’t interested in taking a stance on the morality of Teddy and Rose’s choices (or having bit players hash out their contrasting opinions), which is fine. But it additionally feels like it doesn’t have a lot to say about the afterlife confirmation at its core.
Viewers seeking more rigidly defined answers about that plot element (or even what Rose and Teddy might be expecting) will be more frustrated than those who merely submit to Next Exit as an off-center road movie with a couple of speculative science-fiction sprinklings. With this in mind, perhaps an even more streamlined, all-in character-study approach would have worked better for the movie.
Yet Elfman’s script is also engaging throughout. It’s perceptive, in low-key ways, about how sometimes the only person who can reach or connect with us is someone hurt or adrift in the same manner. If the thaw of its central relationship seems predetermined, Elfman consistently finds ways to put her cast in a good position to elevate this. This includes evocative and sometimes lacerating language of self-assessment, as when Rose sums up the adjudged inevitability of her fate with a casually tossed-off declaration: “I have a self-destruct button in my heart.”
Parker (The Haunting Of Hill House) and Kohli (iZombie) have wonderful chemistry. But more than that, they’re believably invested in their respective characters, who are each likable in their own way but also protective of their damage. They don’t flirt, or yield to connection, until a scene of role-play antagonism in which Rose finally goads Teddy into uncorking some of his bottled-up feelings—and, in fact, still distrust one another after this moment. In the context of this world, they feel three-dimensional.
The film’s modest but appealing technical package also helps distinguish and recommend it. Early in the movie, Elfman layers a bit of Rose and Teddy’s conversation over landscapes. Cinematographer Azuli Anderson makes effective use of natural lighting, and does a good job of capturing both the wistfulness and sense of possibility that open-road vistas can so frequently conjure.
In the end, one’s assessment and enjoyment of Next Exit rests less in its treatment of the more conjectural elements of its story, and more in its sensitive and sympathetic rendering of decidedly Earthbound, day-to-day messiness. Maybe the exit isn’t what we should be looking for, in other words.
62 Comments
I don’t see his name anywhere but this HAS to be a Mike Flanagan property right? It has Katie Parker from Absentia/Hill House, Rahul Kohli from Black Mass/Bly Manor, and Karen Gillan from Oculus. It’s almost the entire Flanagan crew.
This sounds like the first interesting movie in ages. High concept films are cool, even if they’re imperfect.
Love to see more Rahul Kohli, whose eyebrows are distinctively recognizable even out of focus.This appears to be a very limited release, and is “on demand” instead of going to streaming service. Hopefully it’ll show up somewhere soon.
The concept of some form of afterlife, just at a molecular level, seems intuitive to me. The concept that we would be conscious of it does not.
Why? The idea of an afterlife seems completely counterintuitive to me. What natural mechanism could possibly allow for the continuation of life after death?
Sci-fi premise: something something your consciousness is actually a quantum vibration that continues forever in some form once it comes into being.
Considering how easy it is to alter consciousness when one is alive, the idea that consciousness is strong enough to survive death seeks more in the realm of fantasy. But you did say “quantum,’ so there’s probably some scientific validity there somewhere.
Malleability is not necessarily an indicator of fragility.Also, ah yes, “quantum.” The The Orville method of scienticianality.
True, but what kind of hell must be it be like to be alive after death with the consciousness of an infant or someone with dementia? And if we can reverse the polarity of the isoneutronic pulse wave carrier, we won’t need to utilize the quantum field generators at all.
You fool! You would need to bombard the isoneutronic pulse wave carrier with tachyons, not reverse the polarity!
If I want to create an anti-time anomaly that will consume the entire Alpha Quadrant, I’ll try it your way, okay?
But that involves a 6.82913447% chance of an antiproton inversion loop! You can’t take that kind of risk!
Not if you control the tachyon flow by channeling them through the main deflector array!
True, but what kind of hell must be it be like to be alive after death with the consciousness of an infant or someone with dementia?An excellent question that any theological ideas about an afterlife should (and pretty much all fail to) grapple with. Any attempt to formulate a scientific concept of post-death consciousness can’t dismiss the idea just because it’s awful, though. I mean *gestures vaguely at a large portion of existence as we know it*
Well, “life” is the wrong word. Existence maybe. Rocks aren’t alive but they are most certainly there. Memories aren’t alive but they inform life. We’re gonna go somewhere. All the physical matter that makes up who we are is gonna decompose, changing at the molecular, atomic, whatever imperceptible building-blocks-of-matter level. That energy is going to shift, but it will keep existing. How we impact other people will just keep rippling in unpredictable ways. I kind of think that’s what making peace with death is: accepting that everything we are is important whether or not we’re conscious of it. Jesus, I’m a New Age-y dumbfuck weirdo. Don’t listen to me.
I like thinking how we’re all really made of exploding stars. In the end, we’re just cosmic dust. And that’s okay.
I gotta ask, how do molecules indicate an afterlife?AFAIK they don’t even indicate life.
See what I said to A Post-Kinjapocalyptic Wasteland. Or just ask the big turtle whose back we’re all riding on.
Wasn’t this premise already used not that long ago in Charlie McDowell’s “The Discovery”?
I guess everyone involved is counting on audiences not remembering 2017’s The Discovery, which has a nearly identical plot.
Seems like kind of a safe bet. I watched The Discovery, but it seems to have made almost no pop culture impact. It’s nice that this movie appears to actually be engaging more with its concept; The Discovery made zero effort to reckon with how the proof of an afterlife would affect organized religion, which is such an odd creative choice to me.
came to say the same. Also strange they mention Kohli from iZombie, but dont mention McIver is also from the same, or; Kohli from Bly Manor, connecting him and his costar a bit closer. I’ll still watch this, but these reviews arent really helping, other than just announcing the newest project from actors I enjoy watching.
funnily enough, the three actors mentioned first here (Kohli, Parker and Karen Gillan) all had significant roles in Mike Flanagan projects, though I can’t recall any of them sharing a scene together
oh yeah, I forgot about Oculus. Really makes me wish Flanagan would have directed this new one. He’s quickly becoming a guaranteed name in horror/weirdness.
This seems like a strange premise. People have been absolutely sure of an afterlife for millenia. Not all people, obviously, but a lot of people. And most of those people still aren’t revving their engines towards the end even when they have a firm belief in an eternal paradise.Meh, but I’ve seen good movies on thinner premises, so fine with me I guess.
There is a massive difference between “faith-in” an afterlife and “evidence-of”.
Did I say anything about “evidence of”? I didn’t. I said there are people who are 100% sure of an afterlife, who are certain beyond all shadow of any doubt that it exists, and there always have been such people (since the beginning of religion, anyway). That firm, unshakeable belief is what “evidence of” is supposed to imbue in people in this film, but there are people who already have it despite not having scientific evidence, and they are not killing themselves on the regular just to get to it. I don’t think the existence or not of an afterlife plays a major role in most people’s decision to remain alive. We stay alive because no matter how good we think an afterlife is, or no matter how much we don’t care about an afterlife one way or another, we like it here, even when it sucks. We know there are people her who care about us and want us here.
Ughhh…. You missed my point or chose to skip over it entirely. Regardless of how deep they believe it to be true there isn’t currently evidence that its true. Belief and fact are different things. The premise here is that the whole world finds out its a fact. Your argument is that people who believed it prior to this wont really be affected/change their behavior. I’m asserting that is a false assumption. Because and here’s my point again one can believe in something fully without knowing it is true. In this case the knowledge that it is true would absolutely impact even firm believers. Except you keep conflating the two things together. Belief and knowledge are not the same. 100% belief does not equal knowledge of something. Those believers would absolutely be changed by the recognition that their singular belief is now a plural fact.I disagree fundamentally that someone who doesn’t know if something is true but believes it to be so, is the same as someone who knows something is true. Weird equivalence internet person….
N0, you missed mine. The point I’m making is that these people know there is an afterlife regardless of the absence of scientific evidence. You say belief and fact are different things, but they aren’t. They are in theory, but to a person, they aren’t. There are people that you can ask “Is Heaven a fact,” and they will absolutely tell you yes, and they will absolutely believe yes. You could have asked ancient Vikings is Valhalla a fact. They’d say absolutely yes, and maybe cut your head off for asking them. To that person, the afterlife is a fact whether or not you personally think they have enough evidence. They have enough evidence to satisfy their threshold for what is a fact.“Your argument is that people who believed it prior to this wont really be affected/change their behavior.”That’s not my argument and I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said that the population of people who already consider the afterlife a fact is a population we can look at to see what someone would do when they believe the afterlife to be a fact—and just to be clear, scientific evidence doesn’t make something a “fact.” It makes it more likely to be true, and something can be scientifically true for long enough that it becomes “fact,” but science changes its mind sometimes and what was once a “fact” can be not a “fact” tomorrow, which is why we still call evolution a “theory,” even though most of us consider it to be proven enough that we call it fact.All that said, we can see from people who already consider the afterlife a fact that considering the afterlife a fact does not cause people to line up for suicide en masse.“I disagree fundamentally that someone who doesn’t know if something is true but believes it to be so, is the same as someone who knows something is true.”You’re allowed to disagree fundamentally with that. I didn’t say you had to agree, but you believe I argued something that I didn’t, so I think your disagreement in this case is on shaky grounds. But again, that’s allowed and it’s fine. But I also disagree that these people don’t “know” it to be true. There are tons of people who “know” they’ve seen ghosts, and thus believe in an afterlife. It’s not only related to religion. There are plenty of people who “know” things that science hasn’t proven. Just because they don’t have the same threshold of “knowing” that you do doesn’t mean they don’t feel they “know” it.
I think the number of people you think are out there right now who ‘know’ there’s an afterlife without any proof is a lot smaller than you think
I didn’t say anything about the number of people that comprises this population (unless you’re disputing the vague assertion that there have been “a lot” of such people over the course of millenia) so I’m not sure how you have drawn any conclusions about what I think the number is, or in fact what the relevance of such a conclusion would be to this conversation. I said simply that they exist, have existed for millenia, and that they are not, as a population, lining up for suicide just because they know there’s an afterlife, whatever the total number is. There certainly have been some—cults, mainly—but it’s not common.
I wouldn’t bother. Dudes clearly on a campaign to justify faith. They aren’t arguing in good faith, just trolling. And not particularity cogently.
In this statement you contradict your assertion that you didn’t miss my point. In fact you state the opposite.Dude, be more triggered. This is clearly about defending your beliefs not debating what would or wouldn’t happen in the events of the movie. Go be angry at your sky friend for letting you down not strangers on the internet.And NO, not in any cohesive logic is absolute belief in something paramount to it being true. Flat earthers believe the earth is flat, that belief doesn’t change reality.Your a real credit to our species there bub… Way to shine that critical thinking light. Yeesh.
“In this statement you contradict your assertion that you didn’t miss my point. In fact you state the opposite.”No, I didn’t state that I missed your point. I stated that I disagreed with your point. It’s possible for a person to understand your point and still disagree with it. And I know what I said. If you misunderstood what I said, then that’s what happened, but if this discussion is going to just be you telling me what you think I said, we aren’t going to get very far. Why don’t you just tell me what you want to say instead of telling me what you think I said. I know what I said. I don’t really need your misinterpretation of it.“Dude, be more triggered.”I’m not a dude, and this whole internet thing of telling someone they are “triggered” when they disagree with you and thinking you are somehow insulting them doesn’t really fly with me. If you want to believe I am “triggered,” I’m okay with that. I hope it makes you feel good to think I’m triggered.“This is clearly about defending your beliefs”Why would my beliefs—whatever you believe them to be—need defending to you?“Go be angry at your sky friend for letting you down not strangers on the internet.”I have no reason to be angry at anyone, and I don’t have a sky friend, but I’m surprised to hear that you believe people have sky friends. Like, birds, or…? What are we talking about here. Do you make clouds your friends?“not in any cohesive logic is absolute belief in something paramount to it being true.”I never said anything was “paramount” to anything being true. I’m not sure what you think “paramount” means, but it doesn’t seem to be appropriate in this sentence so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.So, again, if you have a point to make, please feel very free to make it. If you just want to say some sentences that I didn’t say and ascribe them to me, then do go ahead and have at it but you don’t really need my continued participation for that.
Dude writes an entire book to tell someone how “not upset” they are.You started your entire diatribe out with the false assumption that belief and reality are the same thing. You never made an honest attempt to debate that, your just trying to scream down people’s throats.This is clearly about something else for you. Your actions show everyone that. You can’t deflect it with debate. Your showing your ass and telling us it’s your face.Be well dude….
Well, I already told you I wasn’t a dude, so now you’re just being a dick for no reason. Two, I never said I wasn’t upset? Where did you read that I was “not upset”? I’m not, but I never said anything about my state of mind, so it’s weird that not only do you think I was saying that, but that you put it in quotation marks. I guess you find lying about things right in front of you “paramount” to the truth. So again, if you’re not even going to read what a person said (and I this point I realize that it’s not that you won’t, it’s that you can’t—it’s “you’re,” by the way), I don’t know why you bother responding.Be well, illiterate asshole.
Still yelling at the sky I see. And Dude is a non-gendered term, everyone is a dude. Calm down dude…
I like how to you “single grammatical error” = illiterate, yet your posts are littered with them as well. Nice hubris…
Multiple grammatical errors, using words that don’t mean what you think they mean, and general failure of reading comprehension overall = illiterate, actually.
Okay Dude… “Checks post” Yep still yelling at the Sky… lmaoBecause calling out grammar in a kinja post is not at all on point for the weak of mind, and lacking of argument. My feelings are so boo-boo now, what will I do…?Your post reflects infinitely more on you than it does on some stranger your arguing with on the internet dude. We’ll all wait on that hubris.
Right, so you’re not very familiar with how things work when communicating via text, but just to help you out, yelling is communicated via using all capital letters, not by writing in normal syntax using normal capitalization rules (though I realize you struggle with grammar and syntax generally, so your confusion is understood). Also, I understand you are a bit out of touch with reality, but you are you, a human person (as far as I know). You are not the sky. You are not the sky! I hope you don’t find that revelation too upsetting, but once you get yourself oriented to person, time, and place, we can attempt to continue this conversation.
Dude you are too rich! It’s a meme, a really common, and well understood meme. But thanks for the help understanding internet speak Grandpa Simpson!The best part was the extra condescending shit at the end, where your thinking your making light of my error but in reality your making one yourself by not understanding the meme culture of the reference your criticizing. Keep pwning yourself in an attempt to make a cogent statement here, this is a gold mine of smiles in my day. Tell me your out of touch, without telling me your out of touch.. Mmm kay Dude?
Okay!
https://tenor.com/view/the-dude-abide-the-big-lebowski-stir-gif-3523187
Cool!
Well done you two, that was a certified mess! Fwiw I’m Team ⚡ Sheep
It’s (after)life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Of course Rahul Kohli knows there’s an afterlife. There’s life after death in every project he’s in!
This isn’t the first movie to have this kind of a premise. I remember there was another movie a few years ago called The Discovery. Not a great movie but it’s premise makes me believe given the current state of things in this world, we would see a global breakdown of society. Maybe even an accelerated extinction of the human race. Imagine scientific proof of life after death that also disproves religion.
The Discovery was such a disappointment. Like Safety Not Guaranteed, it smothered a great premise in twee indie manic romcom horseshit
No denying that. It is wildly disappointing when a movie has a great premise and terrible execution. There have been other movies that ended up the same way. But back to this movie’s premise and the Discovery…it seems like if it were for real, as insane as the world would go, it offers a morbid piece of hope. But right now everything feels like Don’t Look Up.
CW: Discussion of suicidal thoughtsThis premise kind of baffles me, just as it did back in The Discovery. Why would the confirmed existence of an afterlife cause a huge increase in suicides? Because 1) As someone pointed out in another comment, the vast majority of the world is religious and thus they already believe in an afterlife. If an afterlife was confirmed wouldn’t they simply assume it’s the one they believe in and since most major religions consider suicide a sin and thus would avoid it? If the people killing themselves are atheists then that brings me to 2) Now I realize i might be alone in this but as someone who struggled with suicidal thoughts the most comforting thing about them is the fact that there is NOTHING afterwards. The truly frightening thing for me is that this won’t be a relief and that there is more suffering or judgment to follow. So if someone were to confirm life after death existed, especially if the “proof” were ghosts implying we would just wander around aimlessly through the Earth then it would give people LESS reasons to commit suicide until at least there was a clearer idea of what was going on. It definitely made more sense in the third act of The Discovery where they find out that the afterlife is a life where you made different choices and thus they immediately bury the knowledge knowing that if it got out, society would collapse over everyone deciding to kill themselves to change their own lives. Not here.
Anyway, maybe this is too rational given we are talking about the suicidal but it just feels odd to me.
Yeah it’s hard to believe that people would start killing themselves to become ghosts. They didn’t really highlight any benefits, just turning into black-smoke-puff-shadows. There was also a bit where they said not everyone becomes a ghost which seemed to me like the bigger story. Ignoring that, I liked the film. Somewhat believable suicidal protagonists (Parker more than Kohli) agreeing to assisted suicide as a means to change their circumstances. Reminded there could have been something to live for along the way.
We chase various ideas of afterlife because we simply cannot process the concept of utter non-existence. We have to fill in that void somehow. It’s like trying to imagine being blind when you’ve always been able to see.
This writeup reminds me: I’d love to see a movie adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “Hell Is The Absence Of God”.
Boo to Karen Gillan and Rose McIver both having apparently only small rolesMcIver also starred in a short film written & directed by Gillan, The Coward, that is hard to find & I’ve never been able to see
I’d like to see a movie where the existence of an afterlife is proven, and it’s super boring. So it’s up to a hotshot priest to reveal that this truth is a lie! Or that, plot twist, there are MULTIPLE afterlifes, because no one would see that coming. Yeah, I know how I spelled it. That’s the movie’s name: AFTERLIFES.
I don’t understand – they’ve discovered that disembodied spirits aimlessly wander the earth for all eternity, and lots of people suddenly want to sign up for that?
I’m not a mental health professional, but I would think most suicidal people attempt suicide because they want things to END; not because they’re eager to wander around as ghosts.
It was odd to me that this review cited (The Haunting of Hill House) for Katie Parker but somehow landed on (iZombie) instead of (The Haunting of Bly Manor) for Kohli.
same thought…how about “Mike Flanagan regulars…”