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There's nothing like a tragedy to make you stop and think what life is all about. The tragedy that makes 16-year-olds Jake (Potts) and Steven (Barry) reassess their lives comes during a school ski trip to Switzerland.
An avalanche buries the whole party under tonnes of snow, with Jake and Steven emerging as the only survivors. This downbeat British drama chronicles their subsequent attempts to come to terms with the incident.
Within days of the avalanche, weaker-willed Jake has given up on life and is about to throw himself off a cliff when anarchic rich kid Steven offers him a deal. They make a pact to kill themselves in 12 months' time, and to use their last year to complete a series of apparently random and increasingly dangerous tasks.
These goals offer their only escape from depression, although pursuing them sees them ending up on the wrong side of the law, their teachers, their counsellor, their parents, and even each other. But they revel in the controversy because, for the first time in their lives, their existence seems to have a purpose.
This is by no means the first film to tackle the 'what would you do if you knew your time was running out?' theme, but it certainly takes an original approach. Visually it's more interesting than most low-key British films, and the modest budget is only occasionally betrayed.
"New Year's Day" - written by "Withnail & I" star Ralph Brown - has bursts of bitterly black humour and some genuinely touching moments of discovery and emotional growth, although the motivation and philosophy of the main characters seems flawed. Consequently, viewers might feel cheated by the inevitability of the film's conclusion.
