Canary Duty - The Dead Don't Die!

There are some filmmakers who have obvious talent in all the important ways, but I have a somewhat variable relationship with their works.  For example, despite my rants about Man of Steel (still from what I can tell the most read thing on this blog), I do still think that Zack Snyder is a genuinely good director, (even if he does overdo the slo-mo a lot) it's just the subject matter that's the problem.  Another case is Jim Jarmusch.  There are quite a few of his films I have a lot of trouble getting into, to the point that I start to think a lot of the most tired jokes about "quirky" indie filmmakers out there might be right on the money.  But when he's on point though, I dig it immensely, such as with Only Lovers Left Alive.  So I was a bit uncertain going into The Dead Don't Die, as to which mode he was going to be in  On the one hand, hey, a zombie movie, and all the interviews and such out there shows he has a lot of love and affection for the sub-genre.  On the other though, the trailer did show him to be at his most Jarmusch-y.  So what did I think of the end result?

Well, this one really is going to divide people.  If you go into this expecting a Zombieland (appropriate considering Bill Murray's here), or a Shaun of the Dead, or a Braindead, you are probably going to be disappointed.  That being said, I think that in a weird way, disappointment might be sort of a goal of the film as a whole.  See, the humour is of a particularly dry bent, with the main joke being that a lot of the characters aren't really as shocked by the whole "there are zombies now" thing as most people probably should be.  This is taking place in a world where zombie movies already exist, so a lot of characters are semi-prepared for it.  However, as the film goes on, though the humour never 100% goes away, the undead themselves get played less and less for laughs, and it becomes clear that it's not going to have an upbeat ending.  Essentially, it's saying that we can make jokes and lights of an apocalyptically bad scenario as much as we like, however in the end it's still a depressing fact of life that will get us all in the end.  With the film having at least one blatant Trump voter character in there (Steve Buscemi, who I'd say isn't in it enough, but since his character is a republican...), and the suggestion that the disaster is happening as a result of an environmental fuck-up by big business, it's very clear what sort of real-world things this is referencing.

OK, solid set up for a satire, that's fine, but ultimately that does mean that the film is by design not going to be satisfying as a whole, it is deliberately not going to give you that much catharsis in it's storyline.  Granted, it does set this up in a constant refrain of "This is all going to end badly" from Adam Driver's character (which does set up one of the biggest fourth wall breaks in a film with a higher than average number of those), but still, it does end on a bum note.  So how is the rest of the film?  Well the rest has three things going for it.  Firstly, the zombie scenes are pretty well done, with some good make-up, CGI, and gore effects (although weirdly they end up making zombie Iggy Pop look healthier than he has in years!).  There's a unique touch in here in that the undead don't bleed, their blood has turned to a sort of ash, which looks very cool when they're killed.  However, the running joke of them wanting things that they craved in life, moaning things like "coffee" or "wifi" is too on the nose, especially since the original Dawn of the Dead did the same gag perfectly without them saying a word.  In terms of mixing horror and comedy, nothing comes close to this moment from The Return of the Living Dead, it just exists in an awkward middle ground between the two.

The second thing it has going for it is the humour, and this is the one of the main points where your mileage may vary with the film.  The jokes are mostly of a very dry, "mumblecore" type, the sort of wit so dry you could put it in parcels instead of silica gel.  It's rarely absolutely laugh-out laugh hilarious, it's much more deadpan than that, with most of the performer's ironic detachment to things being the central gag.  Yeah, if that sort of thing isn't really to your taste, you might find this a bit hard-going.  The one exception to this is Tilda Swinton's character, who's whole subplot seems to be a walking gag about her persona as a performer, and leads to quite a surreal punchline.  Thing is, the film's kind of been beaten to the punch to that by her scene in What We Do In The Shadows, which also has an exception guest cast.  That brings me nicely to the final point, the one that the film is really being sold on, the very impressive cast list.  It's definitely a novelty seeing all these very well known performers turn up in a zombie film, a sub-genre not exactly known for star-power.  I definitely never expected to see Bill Murray sharing screen time with legendary horror maverick Larry Fessenden (if you've never heard of him, definitely track down some of his movies sometime.  Actually, if you've ever played the videogame Until Dawn, you do know his work.)!  That being said, a lot of the cast are only there for a little while, and are pretty much relegated to their own little subplots, quite a few never interact.  That's probably down to that deliberate disappointment thing I mentioned before, and of course down to logistics.  Still, I'd love it if the whole thing was just Tom Waits narrating the rise of the undead.

A long time ago, I read on a now defunct B-movie website a theory I quite like that the reason there are so many cheap zombie movies out there is because they are George A. Romero fan films.  Well The Dead Don't Die feels like the most expensive and most blatant one ever, even more than Shaun of the Dead was.  If you thought that Romero was sometimes a bit too blunt and on the nose with some of his humour and satire, Jarmusch has taken that as a "hold my beer" moment, even down to explaining out loud one of the most obvious references to Night of the Living Dead.  The end result of all this is that The Dead Don't Die is only OK, it's a film that ends up far less than the sum of its parts.  It definitely doesn't do for zombies what Only Lovers Left Alive did for vampires, but I can't say it's entirely without merit.  Just go in knowing that it aims to bum you out by the end, and there's about enough in here to enjoy, but if you have a low tolerance for this sort of quirky humour (the sort that's often accused of being smug, and/or self-indulgent), you probably won't enjoy this much.  Oh, and be prepared to have the theme song stuck in your head for days afterwards!