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Comedian Jerrod Carmichael opens his first movie as a feature director, On the Count of Three, with its most indelible image: that of the two lifelong best friends at the center of its story, Val and Kevin (Carmichael and a career-best Christopher Abbott), face to face and pointing guns at each other’s skulls. The screen goes black as triggers are pulled, and when this darkly funny film teasingly jumps back earlier in the day, it’s clarified that what we’d just seen wasn’t an acrimonious High Noon (1952) situation but a rashly made suicide pact getting a follow-through. 

Living in a could-be-anywhere midwestern town, Val and Kevin are at what they believe are their wits’ end at that moment. Val is so drained by his monotonous work at the local mulch factory that he impulsively quits when his boss announces he’s getting a promotion. He’s also ghosting his long-time girlfriend (Tiffany Haddish) after a contemplated-but-not-acted-on proposal made him freak out about the prospects of domestic permanence. And Kevin is chronically depressed — his multiple suicide attempts have made him a regular psychiatric-hospital patient — tormented especially by the abuse he suffered at the hands of a child psychologist (Henry Winkler) he was forced to see as a sad foster child.

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