Andrei, a detective and the world’s most horrible father, brings together a terrible group of people in his apartment: his resentful actress daughter, an angry thug, and a cheated cop. Each one of them has a reason to want revenge.
It’s fun to walk into movies blind. That leaves them plenty of opportunity to surprise you. Tension works better that way, and this movie benefits so much from my having gone in clean. This movie unfolded in front of me, slowly realizing its full potential. It wasn’t until about halfway through that I understood just how committed this movie was to its genre tropes, blood gags, and sound-effects laden joyride. “Why Don’t You Just Die!” delivers blasts of bleak comedy and action all while hurling gallons of blood on the walls. Warning: NOT for the faint of heart.
It starts out slowly: Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), a young guy, brings a hammer with him to kill a man. As his murder plans go horribly awry, we learn more and more information until the entirety of the plot is laid before us. With the introduction of each new character, the story spins us in another direction swinging our empathy from character to character and back until we have no idea where to land – which is great to have when you know every character’s life is in question.
Every element in this film shines in unique ways. The camera slides, cranes, dollies, whips, and zooms with the motion of the talent in a perfect-robotic way (eerily reminiscent of Leigh Whannell’s “Upgrade”). The neon greens of the environment slowly succumb to bright oranges splattered heavily by dark red viscous blood. The film flashes to sequences explaining things like: how to unlock handcuffs, or how to live with your heart stopped for seventeen minutes as comedic bits (even mirroring some of the YouTube heavy overhead time-lapse videos.) Not one second of this movie feels routine or humdrum.
The film goes over the top when it starts bringing out the blood and gore. Thankfully, director Kirill Sokolov eases the audience into the effects. Each squirt and pump feels earned the longer the movie goes on until a full-on firehose style spray of blood seems entirely within the realm of normal. My full commendations to Sokolov for deploying these effects artfully and with full effect so that we, the audience, can enjoy them.
It’s bleak and hilarious and filled to the brim with blood. I found myself laughing when I shouldn’t have and shrieking every other time. I could not knowingly recommend this film to the squeamish but for any fans of genre films and their conventions: this movie is a star among splatter gore films. A true gem of a flick.
Now available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video
