Spoiler warning: The protagonist dies in the end.


If Finnish director Phättföekr has his way, this holiday season could be the endtimes for “feel good” movies.  It’s a Horrible Life, a dark and twisted version of Capra’s classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, is the hands-down “feel bad” movie of the year.  If you’re already a tad depressed at the steady erosion of daylight as Christmas approaches, then this film will take you down a few more notches.

Tom Brady, the film’s lead character, is having a horrible life: he loses a bag of money from a bank he robbed, his wife and kids hate him, and he’s ugly as sin.  Any reasonable person might end it all on Christmas Eve by jumping off a bridge — and that’s what Tom decides to do. But just as he’s about to leap into the icy water, an angel appears and shows him what the world would be like if he never existed.  Unfortunately for Tom, the world really would have been better off if he’d never been born. 

The angel explains how Tom’s life was a big mistake.  No less than three types of contraceptives failed to stop him from being created in the first place.  Tom is then shown how, while he was in embryo, his alcoholic mom tried to abort him but was unsuccessful because she kept passing out.  At birth, trying to cut Tom’s umbilical cord, Tom’s kind-hearted father accidentally cuts himself and bleeds to death.  The angel reveals how Tom’s father would have won the Nobel Peace Prize for sewing up the hole in the ozone with a laser beam stitching machine he was building.  In short, all the forces of heaven (and many folks on earth) have been eagerly awaiting Tom’s death.

Tom, however, comes to the realization  that his life does having meaning and he decides to commit his life to peace and refuses to jump off the bridge.  The angel then discloses that she is actually one of Hell’s Angels and promptly gives Tom a push and ushers him to Hell.  Tom endures multiple levels of torture on his trip to Hades that make Dante’s Inferno look like Puff The Magic Dragon.

Sven Phättföekr, the film’s director and a native of Finland, is pleased with the way the film turned out and thinks that the writer — had he survived himself — would have been proud.  Christian Hågershtupt accidentally caught fire and died while trying to burn his manuscript.

“Getting really depressed is a hobby of mine,” says Phättföekr.  “It’s what we do best, here in Scandinavia.  The holidays represent a great opportunity to be anxious and sullen.  I'm a firm believer in a simple maxim: Jump or get off the ledge.  It’s my sincere hope that this film will provide encouragement to those hesitant hangers-on who might be afraid to commit suicide.  Just go for it. 

“I always ask ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’  Whatever that is, that’s what I aspire toward.  So in the end I guess it’s a positively negative movie.  If even one person who sees this movie jumps, then it will all have been worthwhile.”

Phättföekr predicts we’ll be seeing more “feel bad” movies in the years ahead — that is, if his fellow Smegma gang of iconoclastic filmmakers have their way.  In addition to his own sequel, It’s Still Horrible, members of his group are working on much-anticipated dreadful flicks as Woe Is Me, Woe Is Me Too, Meet the Have-Nots, Kingdom of Angst, Die and Let Die, Ill Will Hunting and Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire.

Phättföekr is still looking for a distributor for the film in the United States.  You can contact Phättföekr via email at phat@itsahorriblelife.com.

You can also purchase the glossy 12 in. x 18 in. movie poster for just $9.99!