I know, I know. “Rob is reviewing a film that deals with zombies? That is SO not his deal!”. And normally I would say “we sometimes see films that we don’t necessarily have a burning desire to see,” but that would be a bit outside of the bounds because when we get horror films that come our way, I avoid them like The Plague. However, with “The Dead Don’t Die,” I saw the word “comedy” attached to it on IMDb, so I figured I would give this a shot.
Add to that a cast that includes Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chole Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, the RZA, Iggy Pop, Rosie Perez, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, Caleb Landry Jones, and more as well as writer/director Jim Jarmush, I was more than intrigued. Taking place in a small town in the Midwest, Murray, Driver, and Sevigny play police officers that start to notice strange goings on as fracking is taking place in the North and South Poles. Over a couple of days, the dead come to life and NO ONE is safe.
The last half of that paragraph is LITERALLY all I can write about this film without spoilers to the point where even saying outside of the three actors’ named and their roles could potentially give things away. Even watching both trailers, I cannot write any more in order for our audience to truly experience this film. Each actor truly immerses themselves into their respective roles in a way that completes a puzzle that otherwise would have seen empty. When a film actually causes me to have an outburst in one of its penultimate scenes that resulted in another member of the press telling me that said outburst was their favorite part of the film… that’s what we’re dealing with here.
I think the best way to describe “The Dead Don’t Die” (that has a title song done by the GREAT Sturgill Simpson) is when a friend of mine said it was “a zombie film if it had been done by Wes Anderson,” all the way down to having Bill Murray in it. There is a bit of gore, so yes there were a couple of times where I closed my eyes as things were happening, but there is so much more going on in this film that it is easily dismissible. This is simply a fun way to spend a couple of hours at the theater, so go enjoy it!