Adi (Ziad Abaza, also the film’s co-scriptwriter) is the kind of loud-mouthed wide boy you’d change seats to get away from in a restaurant. Although married to longsuffering Amira (Priya Blackburn) and the father to adorable little girl Mia (Layla Hady), Adi has been seduced away from his family by the siren-song of the vlogging life and spends all his time making videos for his precious channel. His speciality is supposedly feats of strength and endurance in the vein of recently disgraced Mr Beast, although maybe he cheats when the camera is off.
One day, in a shisha bar with his best mate/main enabler Maz (Mim Shaikh), Adi meets a fan, Lee (Harry Reid, not to be confused with the former Democratic American senator) who suggests a new challenge. Meet Lee and the circle of Sufi Muslim mystics he hangs with and they’ll arrange for Adi and Maz to be buried six-feet under in a field, with only an airpipe and a little water each day to survive. Per the title, this experience will simulate the experience of death and help to precipitate a profound spiritual awakening. After some hesitation, Adi decides to do it for the lols and the chance of winning new subscribers, little grasping what he’s let himself in for. Accompanied only by a little monkey figurine named Oge that Mia insists he take with him, Adi duly starts to unravel underground, experiencing delusions as he fantasies that Oge is talking to him.
This sort of claustrophobic, almost one-man show depends a lot, obviously, on how engaging and range-capable the lead performer is. Abaza, thankfully, is very good, appropriately annoying and bombastic in the early scenes, and then affecting when his fragile ego starts to dissolve in the dirt. Be advised that big stretches of it are very dark so it may as well have been a radio play.
• Die Before You Die is in UK cinemas from 4 October.
