As incontrovertible proof of life after death is revealed, a world struggles to reckon with its forever altered state of being. While some go about their business as usual, others jump in front of cars and commit suicide in the streets. Rose (Katie Parker) and Teddy (Rahul Kohli) opt for something a little more regulated. Conducting an official investigation into the afterlife, Doctor Stevensen (Karen Gillan) will end their lives for science. All they have to do is make it across the county in time for their appointments.

‘Suicide road trip comedy’ surely wouldn’t be on anyone’s bingo card for the most feelgood film of 2022, but here we are. Mali Elfman’s Next Exit follows two lost and deeply sad souls as they bicker their way across rural America – Planes Trains and Automobiles, but with euthanasia instead of Thanksgiving.

Parker and Kohli give two of the year’s best performances as Rose and Teddy, their odd-couple interplay consistently bringing big laughs to a serious, existentially challenged landscape. And what would our world look like, should we suddenly learn that ghosts are real? The world building of Next Exit is subtle but effective, told through the stories of surprisingly cheery priests, hippy hitch-hikers and traumatised, uh, border agents. For a film about ghosts, the ghosts of it all are sparingly glimpsed. The real spectres are in the people’s eyes, and their stories. These people aren’t haunted by the dead, but by their own actions and trauma.

The laughs eventually subside, giving way to something sadder and more bittersweet – a tonal shift which Parker and Kohli are more than up to, switching from snippy micro-aggressions to heartbreak and scenes of aggression-aggression.

While this world may not stand up to too much scrutiny, its people largely feel real (but not you, Karen Gillan, nor that accent), and so do the emotions. Funnier than a suicide road trip movie has any right to be, but as affecting and heart-wrenching as it should be.