Big Nothing as Black Comedy

Title: The Big Nothing
Director: Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Genre: Black Comedy

A British film set in Oregon, Big Nothing bleeds dark, ironic humor characteristic of the black comedy genre. In the film, Charlie (played by David Schwimmer) joins a coworker in an attempt to blackmail a local clergyman who frequents illegal porn sites. Once this basic premise is set in motion, everything that can go wrong will, and the humor stems from the lightness with which the movie approaches its own morbidity as well as the irony of the unlikely situations.
The first taste of the film's dark irony is when Charlie arrives at his new job for an interview. After sidestepping the puddle he parks next to, Charlie slams his car door, breaking his window and setting off his car alarm. Charlie's day gets better; when he actually gets the job as a technical support operator, his first customer berates him. Following Gus' (Simon Pegg) lead, Charlie puts the caller on hold and responds with insults relating to the caller's wife. However, Charlie failed to put the caller, whose wife had died six months earlier, on hold, and loses his job (yes, on his first day).
With a blackmail plan perfectly conceived, Charlie, Gus, and Josie McBroom (Alice Eve) set it in motion. However, as Charlie is in a local bar, establishing Gus' alibi, a walk to the 24/7 gas station whose owner never closes, he discovers the owner is in the bar celebrating his 80th birthday. Charlie runs to the Reverend's house, only to find an unconscious body on the living room floor. Believing the man dead, Charlie drags the remains into the septic tank and searches the house for Gus, who non-nonchalantly relays the fight and that he knocked out the victim. The dead body doesn't sober the picture at all, in fact, it makes for a gag. Charlie has to use an ugly garden gnome to weigh the body down.
It's this levity concerning death and the numerous ironic twists and pitfalls of the characters that makes Big Nothing a black comedy, a genre defined by its satire of death (too paraphrase Wikipedia, like the example of Kenny dying in every episode of South Park).