A Film with Me in It is a 2008 Irish Black Comedy/Thriller starring Dylan Moran (of Black Books fame) and Mark Doherty, who also wrote the script.
Mark (Doherty) is a going-nowhere actor and clarinet player who lives in a crumbling flat with his increasingly disgruntled and frustrated girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) and his wheelchair-bound and vegetative brother David (David O'Doherty), and spends most of his time hanging out with his best friend Pierce (Moran), a struggling screenwriter and director who is planning a project which is intended to kickstart their respective careers. His flat is slowly falling to bits because his landlord, Jack (Keith Allen), refuses to do repairs until he gets the rent owed from the perpetually short-of-cash Mark.
One day, a wobbling chandelier finally gives up the struggle against gravity, which kickstarts a chain reaction of accidents that result in an increasing number of dead bodies piling up in the flat before Mark's disbelieving eyes. Panicking, he summons Pierce for help, who hits upon the idea of treating it as if it were a pitch for a film, to enable the two to figure out how to get out of the mess in which they've become embroiled.
A Film With Me in It contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Dylan Moran plays a rather eccentric struggling alcoholic with pretensions of being a writer — the persona he also uses in most of his comedy, and not a million miles from a certain bookshop owner he became famous for playing.
- The Alcoholic: Pierce is very reluctantly admitting he's one of these.
- As Himself: Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Hugh O'Connor
- Black Comedy
- The Cast Show Off: In-story; Mark insists on making the hero of Pierce's script a clarinet player so that only he [Mark] can play the role.
- Chekhov's Gun: Very frequent:
- The loose shelf collapses and bludgeons Jersey the dog, killing him instantly.
- The loose chandelier falls on David, crushing him to death.
- The wobbly stool near the flickering light causes Jack, attempting to fix said light, to topple and land on his screwdriver, impaling himself in the neck.
- Additionally, the opening credits have Jack visibly using his screwdriver before placing it in his breast pocket with the point upwards, alluding to how he kills himself.
- Mark's clarinet which he forgets to put back on its stand, causes Sally to impale herself on said stand when she faints.
- Additionally, the clarinet comes into play when Mark uses it to fake his death.
- The loose window that keeps slamming crushes the neck of the policewoman trying to escape when she disbelieves Mark and Pierce's corpse explanation.
- Mark's towed car is notably filled with petrol; it later returns as body disposal when Mark and Pierce use said petrol to burn the car and the bodies.
- Disaster Dominoes: The entire flat is just one of these waiting to happen.
- He Knows Too Much: After a policewoman stumbles upon the scene, Pierce decides she has to go. He ultimately can't bring himself to do it, but the Disaster Dominoes of the flat take care of her anyway.
- Heroic BSoD: The stress of the day gets to both Mark and Pierce.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Inverted; all the deaths are completely accidental, but occur in circumstances and have results that would instantly look suspicious to any outside observer.
- Shovel Strike: Pierce deals one to the policewoman after she turns up at the flat to deal with a noise complaint.
