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You Cannot Kill David Arquette is an exacting, shockingly intimate look at the wild, wild life of David Arquette. He's a professional actor whom you know from the Scream franchise, yes. But he's also a literal world wrestling champion, in a WCW move made to promote Arquette's 2000 comedy Ready to Rumble — a move that turned wrestling fans rapidly against him, made him the laughingstock of an entire community, and exacerbated his decline into darkness and semi-obscurity.

The documentary covers Arquette's return to the world of wrestling, his attempts to prove he deserves respect on his own merits, and the inspiring ability we have to turn our lives around when push comes to shove (in this case, off the ropes). It's also full of painful, bizarre, aggressive, and all-around wild imagery. We watch Arquette's anxieties, addictions, and decisions push everything to the limit, and we watch some eager wrestlers push him past it. You might feel beat up after watching You Cannot Kill David Arquette, but I promise it won't feel as bad as what Arquette himself went through.

You Cannot Kill David Arquette is currently playing in drive-in theaters and on VOD. Check out some of the wildest moments from the documentary below. And for more, here's my full interview with the man.

David Takes Ketamine

From the jump, we understand that Arquette has myriad health issues. A heart attack, stents placed into his heart, addiction to alcohol, depression and anxiety — these are all parts of Arquette's life, and he makes no attempt to hide them. In fact, one of the first moments we share with the star is a visit to a doctor... who prescribes him a dosage of ketamine.

If you didn't know, ketamine is a drug that some people use for recreation, but doctors use to help medical patients manage feelings of pain and depression by putting them into a dissociative trancelike state of being. Side effects include confusion, an increase in stress, and even hallucinations... and we watch them all happen to Arquette. In agonizing, startling, and out-and-out frightening detail, Arquette simply loses himself. He shakes, sputters, lifts out of his hospital bed, tries to remove the very necessary medical instruments affixed to him, and makes his wife Christina McLarty Arquette (also a producer on the film) look very nervous. It's all a powerful, terrifying reminder of the limits of the human body and brain, and what happens when we make them go further.

David Is Destroyed by Backyard Wrestlers

If you're not familiar with the world of backyard wrestling, hoo boy. In sharp contrast to the smooth, highly-produced, safe-in-theory world of your WWEs, backyard wrestling exists literally in a backyard, and spiritually in a realm of no-holds-barred chaos, boundary-pushing, and very real bloodshed. The wrestling is raw, dirty, and beyond aggressive. Folks use weapons like barbed wire and thumbtacks often. And as soon as I saw they were taking Arquette to one of these matches, I knew he was in trouble.

It didn't matter that it took place in his home state of Virginia. These hardcore wrestling fans were eager to give Arquette a taste of his retribution based on his seemingly fraudulent WCW championship, and grind this Hollywood prissy boy back down to earth. And grind him they did. They psychologically torture him by ignoring and booing his magic-man gimmick, not letting him get any moments of winning in the ring. And they physically torture him with a suplex into thumbtacks, smacks in the back with chairs, and the letting of blood and thensome. While these Virginian backyard wrestlers certainly had a sense of malicious humbling in mind when they destroyed Arquette, it was surprising and refreshing to see them all chop it up after the fight. To be a wrestler, you have to be a wrestler — and this wild sequence may have been Arquette's particular initiation into those hallowed halls.

David Wrestles Luchadores in the Street

In a trip to Mexico, Arquette trains with a group of luchadores, masked wrestlers who practice the phenomenal art of lucha libre (which translates literally to "free fight"). These folks honor the hell out of their craft, refusing to be photographed without their masks, pulling off incredible feats of acrobatic strength and agility against each other, and being in constant dialogue with the legacy of luchadores past. They, um, do not think much of the gringo Arquette coming down south to crash their party and osmosis up their skills and perspectives.

But they train him anyway, giving Arquette their time and attention, and not receiving much to be impressed about in return. The stakes are high, and Arquette takes them seriously: Pull off these moves or we will not respect you. To put it to the test, they take Arquette to a tradition in lucha libre wrestling: Performing on the street — literally. Like, they're stopping traffic in the middle of a busy street to wrestle in front of the car passengers. And at the end of each bout, they prowl through the cars, asking for money from their captive audience. It's wild, funny, and quite humbling to watch Arquette do his best to wrestle in this environment, and doubly so to see no one give him money at first. But by the end of the match, when Arquette takes all his training and pulls off what he needs to, redemption is truly earned, money is put into his palm, and... let's just say the luchadores' masks are off to him.

David's Wife Openly Begs for His Life

Arquette's family loves and supports him. His wife Christina and their children live in a warm, happy-looking household, complete with a backyard full of delightful toys like a full-on wrestling ring (of course) and what can only be described as "giant tennis" (need to play). They, and even Arquette's ex-wife Courteney Cox, want their patriarchal figure to find happiness, enlightenment, peace, and purpose; if the search for these elusive qualities must go through the deepest depths of wrestling, so be it. It's from this base reality of inherent kindness that one of the most bare, psychologically upsetting moments in the film happens — and it has nothing to do with suplexes, high ropes, or heel turns.

In the midst of a particularly graphic lowpoint in Arquette's journey, Christina speaks plainly to the documentary filmmakers, David Darg and Price James, and her audio makes a chilling underscore to the visceral pain and anguish we watch Arquette plod himself through. I'll refrain from using the exact wording of Christina's concerns so you can discover them yourself, but her general point is this: She keeps watching her husband push himself to the limits of his life, over and over again. And one day, she knows he'll push too far and end his life. This naked admission of fear of mortality, coupled with our knowledge of her support, wrestled my emotions to the ground and pinned them handily. What good is finding yourself if the end of the journey is off a cliff?

David Heads to the Hospital

David Arquette himself admitted to me that a match that goes horrifically awry went horrifically awry because of, technically, his fault. Something else had gone wrong earlier, and to try and rectify it, Arquette moved when he shouldn't have moved. But frankly, this admission of wrongdoing, this peek behind the wrestling choreography curtain does nothing to dampen the grim fear I felt watching Arquette's throat get sliced and start bleeding profusely during a wrestling match against a particularly aggressive-seeming competitor.

Physically, obviously, it's carnally horrific to watch a man's throat nearly get slit, to watch helplessly real-life suffering, to wonder if a life is about to be lost on camera. This sequence becomes a wordless onslaught of quick-cut, chaotic images: Arquette holding onto his wound for dear life, his close friend Luke Perry sneering at the camera asking it to be turned off, Arquette and Perry banging on the hospital door, smearing blood on the ground as they beg to be let in. These images are burned onto my brain for some time — but they still don't compare to a psychologically fascinating, highly decision made my Arquette in the middle of all this chaos.

Arquette's throat gets cut in the ring. He starts bleeding. He realizes what's happening, and exits the ring, walking through a bloodthirsty crowd out to get him. He should keep going and get to the hospital as soon as possible, right? Wrong. Instead, Arquette, a tortured sense of duty in his eyes, turns around, heads back in the ring, and dutifully finishes the match. One, two, three, Arquette is pinned and loses properly. Then, and only then, does he exit the ring with a sense of finality. It's as pure a cinematic depiction of the human condition as I've seen in a recent film. Even in the face of death, a person is only as good as their word. And a wrestler's word is to finish the match they promised.

Thank God almighty that you cannot kill David Arquette.

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