Veronika Decides to Die

Veronika is a young woman living in New York whose outwardly comfortable life feels hollow, and after a failed suicide attempt she wakes up in a psychiatric institution. There, a psychiatrist tells her that the overdose has damaged her heart and that she has only a short time left to live. Stripped of the ability to choose the moment of her death, she must come to terms with her situation and with the people around her in the institution.

The film is a drama with romantic elements, based on Paulo Coelho's novel. Emily Young directed it from a screenplay by Larry Gross, and Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Veronika. David Thewlis appears as Dr. Blake, with Jonathan Tucker, Erika Christensen, Melissa Leo and Erica Gimpel among the credited cast of thirty-three. It was produced by Muse Productions, PalmStar Media, Future Films and Das Films on a budget of nine million dollars, and its worldwide box office came to about two million.

Audience response has been mixed: on IMDb it holds 6.3 out of 10 from around 14,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 5.8 out of 10 from roughly 286 votes. A critics' rating of 1.7 out of 10 from 311 reviews is considerably lower than either audience figure. The film runs 103 minutes.