The Dead Collectors
2021 · 12m · United Kingdom
Directed by Brendan Cleaves
Genres: dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
In an alternate-reality pandemic, two professional collectors of the dead wait downstairs at a family home, trading complaints about the job while the dying grandmother upstairs says her final farewells.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A pandemic film that treats death like a *job*—bureaucratic, mundane, weirdly funny—is exactly the kind of subversive premise that makes consensus critics squirm. Cleaves nails the absurdist flip: the dying grandmother upstairs is almost beside the point; the real drama is two professionals complaining about their shift downstairs.
The film situates itself smartly in a lineage of darkly comic waiting-room narratives, from *Ikiru* to contemporary satire, executing its premise with formal restraint and a keen ear for the rhythms of mundane dialogue elevated by circumstance.
The brilliant move here is anchoring the entire piece to those downstairs conversations—the decision to let complaint and banter carry the weight of a deathbed scene above, making the unseen tragedy feel more present than any performance could.
Reviews
This one is really well-made and exceptionally funny; possibly my favorite short of the year so far.