A Film with Me in It 2008

Mark is an actor living in a basement flat beneath his writer friend Pierce, where he shares a cramped life with his girlfriend Sally and looks after his paralysed brother David. Struggling to find steady work and braving the burden of care, he constantly dodges his landlord, Jack, to avoid overdue rent and to keep the flat’s deteriorating condition under wraps.

As tensions mount, Sally reaches a breaking point. She ends the strained relationship with Mark, informs Jack about the necessary repairs, and decides to move out. The flat’s decline accelerates, and Mark endures a double tragedy: first, a bookshelf crashes down and kills his dog, then a chandelier collapses in the living room and crushes David. Mark is left staring in horror as Jack appears to mend a high lightbulb on a wobbly stool, only to fall and fatally wound himself with his screwdriver. Pierce arrives soon after, discovering the bodies and spiraling into panic.

In the aftermath, Mark and Pierce hide in the bathroom and scheme to manage the fallout, but Sally unexpectedly returns. Discovering David’s body, she faints and, in a grim twist, impales herself on Mark’s clarinet stand. Overwhelmed by a sense of absurdity at the sequence of fatal accidents, Pierce hatches a plan to relocate Jack’s body, arguing they both had motive to kill him. Sally’s father turns up, and a Policewoman arrives due to an unrelated noise complaint, triggering further panic in Pierce, who seizes her hostage in an attempt to control the situation.

The officer is kept alive but restrained, and the room grows tense as she struggles to escape through a faulty window—only for the window to close and crush her head. Surrounded by a growing stack of corpses, Pierce devises an even bolder scheme: he places David, Sally, Jack, and the family dog in his car and drives to a remote area to detonate it, leaving little forensic trace. To avoid arousing suspicion toward Mark, he also stages Mark’s death by placing his jewellery and clarinet with David’s body, hinting that Mark died as part of the chaos.

The plan continues as they move the officer to the neighbor’s garden and pretend she died from a falling plant pot. Then, in a final ruse, they shave and cut Mark’s hair, dress him as David, and try to present Mark as his disabled brother for a caretaker alibi during Pierce’s absence. In the closing moments, Mark’s agent calls with a tempting acting role, a possibility he cannot accept while living as David. Meanwhile, Pierce directs a film adapted from the events they lived through, turning tragedy into fiction.