Part surreal comedy, part mystery – and all bonkers
She Dies Tomorrow 15 Cert, 84 min
★★★★★
Dir Amy Seimetz
Starring Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina
Fatalism is catching these days, which makes She Dies Tomorrow feel more straightforwardly allegorical than its writer and director may have initially intended. At any other point in history, Amy Seimetz’s new film would have been a near-unclassifiable exercise in nihilist bizarrerie: imagine a languid Judd Apatow comedy crossed with one of the Final Destinations and series three of Twin Peaks. But in the time of Covid, her tale of viral existential gloom feels grimly on the nose.
It centres on a young woman called Amy (House of Cards’ Kate Lyn Sheil) who becomes unshakeably convinced one evening that the coming day will be her last on Earth. Amy has just moved house, and a new phase of life seems to beckon: hints are dropped about an ongoing struggle with alcoholism and an abortion she’s only just begun to reckon with. But before the boxes are even unpacked, she’s browsing cremation urns online and listening to Mozart’s Requiem on repeat.
A friend called Jane (Jane Adams) visits and tries to allay Amy’s concerns. But instead, she also becomes seized by the same notion – then passes it on in turn to the guests at her sister-in-law’s birthday party, who sink into the same borderline-catatonic despair-ridden state. The setting is bland American suburbia, but Seimetz has the place crawling with unease, using an arsenal of techniques that range in conspicuousness from some very Lynchian lighting tricks – think
Imagine a languid Judd Apatow film crossed with series three of ‘Twin Peaks’
coloured strobes and sickly sodium glare – to subtly off-kilter cuts.
The film is never less than timepassingly bonkers, but I rarely found it much more than that either. And while the performances are all haunting and engaging by turns – including some natty cameos for Michelle Rodriguez, the horror director Adam Wingard and the experimental filmmaker James Benning – their characters feel less like people than symbols in some strange, slowly unravelling code.
Playing on rotation in my own head throughout was a line from a film with which She Dies Tomorrow has absolutely nothing in common, The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living or get busy dying.” Seimetz’s characters aren’t busy doing either, and eventually you find yourself wanting to plead with them to please just pick one and get on with it.
On Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player and VOD from today