'The Dead Don't Die'
Jim Jarmusch's attempt to do an American 'Shaun of the Dead' fails miserably to achieve the knowing wit that the British film possessed in spades. It's far too busy being "meta" and concerned with "ironic" dialogue delivery that it misses what made 'Shawn of the Dead' so humorous. It's a shame, because 'The Dead Don't Die' (not to be confused with a 1975 film of the same name) boasts an excellent cast and is stuffed with actors that will be familiar to almost everyone, or anyone that's seen a film in the last 20 years anyway. But the film does nothing with them - especially in the case of Tilda Swinton - and ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. Now, the same can be said for the final destination of 'Shaun of the Dead' too, which was sort of the point of that film. But the journey was also entertaining, which cannot be said for Jarmusch's film.
Set in Centreville, USA, we're told that a series of global events, such as fracking in the Polar regions, has (naturally) brought the dead back to life and (also naturally) they are concerned with ripping the flesh off of the living and scoffing it down and...well, that's it really. There's nothing new here, not that there has to be of course. It's just a zomcom after all. But, its staleness makes the runtime of 1 hour 44 minutes seem very long indeed. Plus, when that's coupled with the endless laconic delivery of the script's lines, it all makes it seem like it's just treading water, until the end credits roll. Few, if any, of the jokes really make a splash and especially eye rolling is the fourth-wall-breaking discussion of the script in the film's last act, where both Bill Murray and Adam Driver just seem so, so, desperate for a laugh. But none of it lands.
Those familiar with zombies will find little satisfaction here, except for the odd nod to the master (Romero) and some decent zombie makeup. There's some head lopping scattered around that's mostly confined to the last reel, but most of the gore is obscured or happens off screen and there's a curious decision made to reduce the splatter to CGI mist, which is just "off" in an R rated film (or 16's this side of the pond). There's also an annoying - perhaps deliberately so - title theme song by some country music singer that gets regular play throughout the film and a message that basically says that humanity deserves its apocalypse, because we're all dicks.
'The Dead Don't Die', like most horror comedies (a wretched subgenre, if ever there was one), just ends up falling between two stools and flatly onto its face. It's not funny enough to be a comedy and not horrific enough to be a horror movie. So, we're left with a load of nothing in the end and wondering what Jim Jarmusch was aiming to achieve here, other than, as said earlier, trying to do an American 'Shaun of the Dead'.
3/10
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by bassman
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