Zac Efron should consider a new agent. Having carved himself a comfortable career trajectory with happy-go-lucky roles in Hairspray and the High School Musical series, he's about to squander all that goodwill by linking up with director Burr Steers for this bizarre misstep, which is based on the novel by Ben Sherwood.
Charlie (Efron) kills his younger brother in a car accident. After being resuscitated by EMT Ray Liotta (seriously), he spends every day for the next five years playing baseball with his brother's ghost (Charlie Tahan) in the middle of the woods. They also enjoy making masturbation jokes and tossing around curse words.
Around the halfway mark, the radiant Amanda Crew shows up as the love interest, in a last-ditch effort to rescue both Charlie and the film from the brink of insanity — but by this point, Steers's overwrought melodramatic mess is beyond resuscitation.
