As Zia (Patrick Fugit) watches two beautiful blonds leave the bar on another guy’s arm, Eugene (Shea Whigham) lets him in on a little secret, “Girls never come back. They say they’ll be right back, but they never do.” Unfortunately for the newly deceased Zia, this somewhat cruel fact of life also applies to his afterlife.

Set in an extra circle of the Inferno reserved for people who “offed” themselves, Wristcutters: A Love Story follows Zia on his post-life quest for romance. An innovative sci-fi-indie-romance, Wristcutters may fall short of cult classic status, but its wry script, ludicrous cameos and quirky representation of a grim reality are bound to find a fan base.   

After breaking up with longtime girlfriend Desiree (Leslie Bibb), Zia, in a pure act of despair, slits his wrist. In the most ironic, pathetic and yet hilarious twist of events, Zia is not transported into Heaven, or even Hell, but in a world where everything is the same as his own, “just a little worse.” 

So what does this dead 20-year-old do when he realizes he is wasting his afterlife working at Pizzeria Kamikaze? He goes to the local bar and bets on how people “offed” themselves. A drama would have ended here, with the perfect depiction of college life: a continuation of drunken evenings, crummy apartments, moody roommates and even more drunken nights. But the plot thickens when Zia hears that Desiree herself gave up on the land of the living.  

Beer in hand and ideas in head, Zia and Eugene go on the quintessential road-trip. Zia is determined to find his love and Eugene has nothing better to do. The pair traverses a bleak desert of on-going garage sales in a vortex-inhabited car, all to the music of the gypsy punk group Gogol Bordello. To spice things up, the two then meet an unusual hitchhiker, Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), a girl convinced she arrived in the tenth circle of hell by mistake.

In Wristcutters, director Goran Dukic achieves the impossible, rendering what could be a grim tale into a quirky romantic comedy. While this unusual romance is not the stuff of daydreams, it’s cute.

Adapted from Etgar Keret’s short story “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” Wristcutters is filled with elements of romantic-comic fantasy. The image of a couple strolling down the beach under the stars has become a clich’eacute;, but seeing two people stumble on a beach of used condoms and needles, under a starless sky, is an oddly refreshing touch. But Dukic’s most original decision was in casting singer-songwriter-composer Tom Waits as an undercover god. Yes, you read that correctly, Tom Waits plays God.  

While Waits certainly brings an attractive supernatural element to his character, this fictionalized god is responsible for the movie’s one sour note. The film shifts from indie darling to typical first-date movie. But even with its overly sentimental final tone, this innovative sci-fi-indie-romance is hard to hate.