Rating 25/100
Possible cult classic…? Funny…?
I think not.
I’m not alone in my Adam Driver obsession. My friend is as deep in the hole as I am and we’ve been wanting to knock The Dead Don’t Die off our list for a while. There’s a little issue though… you can’t rent it anywhere. Not RedBox or Amazon or Google Play. So when my friend had to celebrate her birthday last week, I decided to surprise her by buying it. I was promised it would be worth it. I was told it was the next cult classic… I was lied to.
It may come as a shock to you, it did to me, but you can actually make a movie without a plot. Shocker right? The Dead Don’t Die has proven this fact because there was absolutely no point in it. I was surprised to see that any storytelling rules were followed, which goes to show that some things are always needed in a story - aka, a character’s wants and the inciting incident. Both of these things are easy enough when you think of the dead rising from their graves. Clearly, everyone doesn’t want to turn into a zombie and the zombies themselves are the inciting incident. Maybe I shouldn’t give the writers too much credit.
Which leads to the idea that The Dead Don’t Die feels like the perfect example of what not to do…. ever.
Like breaking the fourth wall. This happened a few times. Once at the beginning when two of the actors referenced the song on the radio being the theme song, and another time when the same two actors mentioned reading their scripts (that alien ship was never a part of the plan). Was there ever meant to be a point? Was this movie really just a prediction for 2020? If so, I need to know, because nothing else was mentioned or reference to explain why this was happening. Instead, it set the audience, being my friend and I, up for expectations that were never met. Breaking the fourth wall wasn’t the only weird thing to happen. References to these strange occurrences kept happening, but again, never explained as to why. A blip and then gone.
The only thing I can think of is a tongue and cheek shout out to the movies the actors have starred in. Overall, not a good enough reason.
And if you want to make a meaningful movie where your audience walks out of the theater with a certain thought on their mind, don’t do it like the ending of The Dead Don’t Die. It was clear from the way the zombies were acting that there was a message. I’ll leave that exact message as a secret - I don’t want to spoil the movie, not that I recommend watching it to find out. We didn’t need to have it spelled out. Or shoved down our throats. A good storyteller can make it happen as if by magic.
Everything about this movie was done incorrectly, to the point that it almost felt on purpose, but none of it came across as funny. I kept waiting for the humor to start so that I could look back and finally see how funny it all was. The attempt was there, you could see the strings. You could see how over the top the movie was meant to go. I mean, Driver leans out of his window to strike a zombie. The trailer was the only funny thing. It should be because it contained the funniest parts. Nothing else could get a chuckle out of us though. Especially when you combine the poor choices with the gore. I’m fine with blood and guts. I’m not fine with seeing someone’s intestines ripped out by a zombie.
So don’t be like me friends. Don’t waste two hours. You’ll just wish you had them back. Actually, I feel like I’ve lost a few brain cells in the process of watching it.
Happy Watching
Love Kait