THE DEAD DON’T DIE
Play undead
RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 105 minutes Director jim jarmusch Cast adam driver, Bill Murray, Tilda swinton, Rza
“Hipsters, and their irony,” hipster director Larry Fessenden ironically states during The Dead Don’t Die. By then, we’ve already had RZA making deliveries for WU-PS, heard Adam Driver talk about the opening credits’ “theme song”, and seen Caleb Landry Jones wearing a Night Of The Living Dead badge. Hipsters, and their irony, indeed.
The trouble with irony is it’s used to distance, and if there’s one thing this film needs less of, it’s distance.
Jim Jarmusch’s take on the zombie genre is a strange creature. The plot – a small town is invaded by zombies thanks to polar fracking – stumbles from one scene to the next with the urgency of a Romero ghoul. It’s occasionally interspersed with lines of dialogue so meta you feel like you’re watching a Scream sequel, but without the connective tissue (or brain tissue, for that matter) of Wes Craven’s masterpiece. It’s as if Jarmusch sat down to write the script, then got distracted and wandered off before adding the subtext. Sure, there’s some casual satire about how the undead crave what they used to crave – coffee, TV, wi-fi – but so what? Dawn Of The Dead did that in 1978.
It’s a shame, as the cast is magnificent: this is an ensemble piece that (sort of ) gives everyone something to do, even if it’s never totally clear why they’re doing it.
If you’re expecting an undead version of Only Lovers Left Alive, this won’t get your pulse racing. It’s essentially an excuse for Jim and his mates to hang out, to the extent of there being dialogue acknowledging that everyone’s in a Jarmusch movie. So The Dead Don’t Die will be DOA for anyone but the most dedicated hipster. Isn’t that ironic? Sam Ashurst
Has the urgency of a Romero ghoul
Bill Murray and Carol Kane share a scene in The Dead Don’t Die. They last worked together in 1988’s Scrooged.