Item: The Dead Don’t Die
Rating: 2
Author: Kalyn Corrigan

Overlook Film Festival Review: The Dead Don’t Die

June 1st 2019, 2:37pm

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: The peaceful town of Centerville finds itself battling a zombie horde as the dead start rising from their graves.

With a cast consisting of Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Larry Fessenden, Selena Gomez, Iggy Pop, RZA, Carol Kane, and Tom Waits, you'd think THE DEAD DON'T DIE would be an undeniable home-run. You'd be wrong. Sadly, despite director Jim Jarmusch's terrific track record, an exciting new sub genre for the filmmaker to play with, and a stellar group of actors at his disposal, the ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE creator is bogged down by his own best intentions to make a zombie movie that feels several years too late to be labeled as anything jaded horror fans should bother to watch.

It all starts when the earth falls off its axis — literally. Thanks to staggering climate change, the earth's axis has completely flipped over in the opposite direction, causing a myriad of strange happenings in the process. Along with unusual sunlight hours and a sudden and violent increase in natural disasters around the world, the dead begin rising out of their graves, causing the once quaint and peaceful town of Centerville to go up against an entire zombie horde.

Whether or not you'd describe yourself as a horror fan, chances are, In this day and age, you're more than aware of the existence of zombie movies. With horror comedies like SHAUN OF THE DEAD reaching the masses, Sang-ho Yeon's TRAIN TO BUSAN being re-made for American audiences, cutesy undead taking over TV with the recently announced series adaption of WARM BODIES, and the tenth season of THE WALKING DEAD hitting the air with millions of viewers per episode, to say that we've exhausted the subject would be the understatement of the century. Therefore, with the world being at the apex of zombie fandom, making a movie of note about the undead in 2019 means the filmmaker in question really needs to bring something new to the table in order to stand out. Sadly, Jarmusch's deep dive into the topic brings us nothing we haven't already seen before.

In fact, if anything, THE DEAD DON'T DIE only reminds audiences of better movies that have come before. Referencing (both visually and verbally) George A. Romero's iconic entries and making two of the main characters 'horror movie experts' certainly doesn't help, especially when one of the 'experts' in question incorrectly refer to zombies as cannibals, something that any true Romero fan would know isn't the case because cannibals eat their own kind, and the undead are no longer classified as people. One scene in particular is played for laughs, but is so strikingly similar to a hit and run scenario in Edgar Wright's titular ghoulish gas of a movie, it only causes the viewer to recall the time back in 2009 when the joke was actually funny.

The Coen Brothers approach to humor only adds to the tedious nature of this already incredibly slow paced snoozefest. When the dead start attacking the living, local policemen (and woman) Cliff Robertson (Murray), Ronnie Peterson (Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Sevigny) react with a shocking state of indifference, using deadpan humor to establish a lethargic tone. The mood is meant to merit a comical enviornment, but is such a lazy and unprovoked slant that it only adds to the wearisome feeling hanging over the entire runtime, like a black cloud following the characters around wherever they go — which isn't far. Tilda Swinton's character undoubtedly steals the show, but her character feels as though she's in a different movie entirely, and Driver's constant meta references to the script and the director take away any belief that might have suspended in the film's favor.

At the end of the day, one has to wonder why Jarmusch even bothered making this movie in the first place. Dated, dull, riddled with pacing issues and lacking any clear passion, THE DEAD DON'T DIE feels like less like a film and more like a shrug. Did Jarmusch know that he'd get an easier greenlight if he made a horror movie? Did he miss the past decade when zombies went so mainstream that casual movie goers actually claimed that Romero ripped off WALKING DEAD? Was he just looking for a chance to sit in a cop car with Bill Murray? As ridiculous as it sounds, any of these answers seem more believable than the notion that the director was actually trying to make a noteworthy addition to a genre that's already been done to death. A few scattered laughs do not a movie make. THE DEAD DON'T DIE is dead on arrival. Do not resuscitate.