What Happens Later review – Meg Ryan and David Duchovny aren’t the only ones trapped in purgatorial romcom

It’s a teaser, all right. Why, if you were to co-write and direct a film in which you also award yourself one of the two lead roles, would you make the central character such an insufferably kooky nightmare? With the character of Willa, in her second attempt at feature film directing (after 2015’s Ithaca), Meg Ryan answers the question of what happens when the manic pixie dream girl archetype hits late middle age (spoiler: it’s not pretty).

A freak snowstorm strands Willa in an unnamed mid-American airport along with her ex-lover, Bill (David Duchovny). They niggle at each other and unpick the demise of their relationship over the course of a seemingly endless night and through dialogue so archly banal, I almost dislocated my jaw from furious teeth-grinding. It’s a tonal mess, a film that aims to be an adorably quirky romcom but plays out as such a surreally purgatorial ordeal that at one point I found myself wondering, Wait, are they actually dead? Am I? Is this what hell looks like?