“Shatterday” stars Willis as Peter Novins, a P.R. agent who picks up the phone at a bar and accidentally dials his own number. Novins immediately realizes his mistake but before he can hang up, somebody unexpectedly picks up at his house. And the person on the other end of the line is also Peter Novins.
Over the course of several phone conversations, the first Peter Novins and the second Peter Novins realize that they’re not victims of a practical joke, and that somehow there are now two of him, with the same memories and the same aspirations. When they realize they cannot both live the same life the first Peter Novins declares war on his doppelgänger, canceling his bank accounts and burning bridges with businesses and grocery stores in order to force the second Peter Novins to leave the house so he can reclaim his territory.
The second Peter Novins adopts a very different strategy. He decides to be the better version of Peter Novins, mending fences with old lovers, quitting his morally compromising job, and inviting his estranged mother to move in with him. While the second Peter Novins thrives, the first deteriorates until he’s a quivering mass in a hotel room.
The second Peter Novins shows up and tells the first that he looks terrible. “I haven’t quite been feeling myself these days,” the first Novins darkly jokes. As they ponder the strange situation they’re in, they consider the Jungian archetypes, and the second Novins surmises that, “When I first got loose I was the Shadow. Now I’m the Self.”
“Now I’m becoming the Shadow,” the first Novins assumes.
“No,” the second Novins says. “You’re becoming a memory.” They shake hands, and the first Novins literally fades away.
