On the Count of Three

Comfort has never felt more discomforting than it does in On the Count of Three, a profound new comedy about suicide, mental health, depression, and the absurd lengths we go to help the strange people we love.

On the Count of Three works more than it doesn’t, though the film, which is reaching theaters almost a year and a half after its Sundance 2021 debut, feels like something that its director and star has already outgrown.

Carmichael takes the unhappiness of these men seriously. That’s the precise needle the movie threads: It finds comedy in two people at the very end of their ropes without turning their depression into the butt of the joke.

A rousing tragicomedy that straddles a line between incredibly calibrated gallows humor and a devastating discourse on the burden of existence.

It's bleak to the point of nothingness.

Carmichael clearly hasn’t set out to trivialize a serious subject. But the film may inadvertently end up doing that, by delivering a message that can be boiled down to a platitude...

There’s a sometimes uncomfortable tension between strained comedy and the more organic, emotional parts of the film. But Carmichael’s direction saves this.

A hard-to-watch dramedy about suicide.

Madness and reason play cat and mouse in a gratifying mess with the ability to extract "inappropriate" humor from tragic situations.

Equally provocative and profound, On the Count of Three tackles an often ignored conversation with the gravity it deserves.