'Til Death Do Us Part

(Contains spoilers)

One day, after hitting a writing slump, I decided I needed a break. I just wanted to write for the sake of it—no expectations, no pressure. I opened my laptop and began: A car arrives in a forest. A man walks to the boot. He opens it, revealing a corpse inside… nothing new, I thought. But then the corpse spoke: “You’re some feckin’ eejit, you know that?” It made me laugh. I had the idea: A man tries to bury his murdered wife, but even as a corpse, she won’t stop nagging him.

I wrote the draft in an hour or two, printed it off, and tossed it in a drawer. “I’ll probably never make that,” I thought.

At the time, I was working on a much more ambitious short about a couple falling in love in virtual reality. I’d been rewriting it for weeks and still couldn’t make it work. When people asked what I was working on and I explained that one, I’d always get the same blank stare. Then I’d tell them about the talking corpse script—and they’d laugh. Maybe there’s something to this idea? I thought.

So I showed the first draft to my partner - she hated it.

What bothered her wasn’t the dark humour or the off-colour setup. It was that the female character only existed to serve the joke. She said, “No one ever asks why a wife has to nag her husband in the first place.” She was right.

We all know couples like Jimmy and Sheila. Where the man wouldn’t lift a finger unless told. Where the emotional and mental labour always falls to the woman. I realised it was important that this dynamic came through in the story. The film may be told from Jimmy’s perspective, but I had no intention of making him a sympathetic character.

Where Sheila is curious about the universe and the meaning of life, Jimmy is selfish and small-minded. He won’t even take responsibility for her murder. He’s cowardly. He dumps her in a cold grave and walks away.

The twist at the end flips the power dynamic. Sheila returns—whether as a ghost or a hallucination, we don’t know. But freed from her corpse, she’s able to move again, while Jimmy is left helpless. The car won’t start, and she reminds him she’s been telling him to get it fixed for months. If he’d just listened, he might have gotten away with murder. Now he’s stuck—and probably going to be caught.

While the setup makes light of a very serious topic, the humour isn’t cruel or dismissive. We’re laughing at Jimmy—at his ignorance, his selfishness, and his well-earned downfall.