“The Dead Don’t Die”– Movie Review

This week, I attended a New York Times Screentimes advance screening of the new comedy-horror, “The Dead Don’t Die”, starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver; written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. 

Synopsis

When a small town is overtaken by zombies, can its understaffed and inexperienced sheriff's office sufficiently defend its citizens?

 

Story

Things are usually pretty quiet in Centerville; as a result, Chief Cliff Robertson (Murray) pretty much has things under control, with the help of Officers Ronnie Peterson (Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny).  The town suddenly finds itself shrouded in strangeness when various odd behavior is noticed -- late sunsets, non-functioning cell phones and broken-up television and radio transmissions. Based on what’s being reported in the news lately, some people are of the belief that all of this is being caused by what’s referred to as “Polar Fracking” -- fracking occuring at the polar ice caps which have theoretically knocked the earth off its axis. 

Folks try not to make too much of this since they have their own lives to live -- until they don’t.  In the local cemetery, long-dead corpses suddenly arise from their graves and start trawling Centerville for victims -- in this case, these are not the brain-eating zombies that are familiar to many, but instead, zombies that consume human viscera and limbs.  It all starts when employees at the town’s diner are discovered murdered -- both of them eviscerated in a similar manner. Was this the work of a wild beast? A pack of beasts? The thought that it could’ve been zombies doesn’t even occur to Chief Robertson -- until, that is, he and his team start encountering the  roaming un-dead themselves.

Thanks to Officer Peterson’s familiarity with zombie lore, he explains to his team that the only way these beings can be neutralized is through decapitation.  So, armed with machetes, swords and shotguns to be aimed directly at a zombie head, Roberton and Peterson set out to rid the town of Centerville of this deadly scourge.  But the more they patrol the town, the more zombies they find. By the time they reach the cemetery, they find that the zombies have self-exhumed -- even those of the children, which were located in a separate area.  Seeing that they are now outnumbered, Robertson, Peterson and Morrison find that the hunters have now become the prey. Despite this, can they find a way to save the remaining town members?

 

Review

As a comedy-horror movie, “The Dead Don’t Die” is something of a genre hybrid.  Yet, it doesn’t altogether work as either. It is neither scary enough to be a horror movie nor is it quite funny enough to be a comedy.  Ironically, the reason why it is not scary enough to be a horror flick is due in large part to the comedy element; it is undercut by the fact that it doesn’t take itself terribly seriously.   Regarding being a comedy, there are certainly amusing moments, but precious little that could be characterized as laugh-out-loud funny. Many of the jokes are predictable and the humor isn’t terribly innovative; in some regards, the film is a little bit past its time as the zombie horror genre has already been parodied in a much more successful fashion (e.g., “Zombieland”, “Shaun Of The Dead”).

While “The Dead Don’t Die” isn’t a terrible movie, it is a bit disappointing when you consider all of the talent involved.  Judging from his past films, Jarmusch can be very funny when he’s not trying to make a comedy; here, however, he seems to be working a bit too hard.  At times, he almost appears to be trying to channel David Lynch-type weirdness. Additionally, without giving away too much, Jarmusch makes several attempts to derive humor from dialog that pierces the fourth wall, but most of it largely falls flat.  As entertaining as some of the performances may be when you see all of these famous names on screen together, it’s not nearly enough to elevate the rest of the motion picture (Tilda Swinton’s turn as a Scottish mortician is particularly memorable in its strangeness alone).