The peaceful town of Centerville finds itself battling a zombie horde as the dead start rising from their graves.
Here lies the zombie genre: 1968 – 2019. It was nice knowing you. Thanks Jim Jarmusch! You would think in this day and age that when it comes to zombies, you have seen it all, especially when you’re a die-hard horror fan who has been watching scary movies since age 12 but good ol’ Jim Jarmusch set out to prove us all wrong. And he succeeded. In making a film that is an absolute head-scratcher and totally devoid of any genuine emotions, scares, blood, gore, and pretty much anything else you would associate with this particular genre.
When I left the press screening for this film, nearly every other member of the press I met outside the theater, who are usually affable and good-humored, looked like the zombies we just witnessed on the big screen. What, in the hell, did we just watch? Their puzzled faces, and mine too, asked that very question. And each of us, in our own unique way, will dare to answer that very question.
In the small American town of Centerville, strange things are afoot. With reports of Polar fracking apparently having knocked the earth off its axis and causing cellular interference, the days don’t start getting dark until late into the night, disrupting people’s sleep cycles and causing irritability and hyperactivity. It also reanimates the dead as corpses from the local cemetery begin rising from their graves. When two waitresses at the local diner wind up dead, Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray), Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver), and Officer Minerva Morrison (Chloë Sevigny) are perplexed at what have could have caused the gruesome murders but as more bodies start piling up, and zombies begin appearing throughout the town, they must band together to try and save the remaining townsfolk, as well as themselves.
The plot is exactly what you’d expect from a zombie film but director Jim Jarmusch, known for his quirky, offbeat films such as “Dead Man,” “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” and “Only Lovers Left Alive,” forgets to add the essential elements for any good zombie flick: gore, character development, lots more gore, and scary zombies. When I was in film school back in my early 20s, we would sometimes make movies on the fly, coming up with new ideas and suggestions as we went along and sometimes there was no script, just lots of improvisation. “The Dead Don’t Die” feels like one big exercise in spontaneity, and I’m not just talking about the performances, but the script as well. As a filmmaker, I am all for improvisation but you still need a coherent storyline that sets the precept for the overall narrative. Here, there is no structure whatsoever, there are no character or story arcs, people do and say things that make no sense whatsoever and what attempts at plot twists do arise, are so preposterous and forced you realize that Jim Jarmusch has absolutely no idea how to make a zombie film.
Early on, there is a scene between Bill Murray and Adam Driver as they begin to notice strange goings-on around town. Murray says, “I was supposed to retire two years ago.” Driver turns to him and quizzically asks, “Yeah, why didn’t you?” at which point Murray snaps, “What, are we going off script now?” In that instant, I got it, a wink to the audience to let us know not to take the film so seriously and I was totally fine with it, this was going to be a satire, and if it came close to “Shaun of the Dead,” I would be very happy. But in the end, I was not happy, not in the least. The film goes beyond satirical, in all honesty, it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be.
Throughout the movie, Driver casually states that things are not going to end well. Eventually, Murray calls him out, asking how he knows this. Driver states that he read a copy of the script (Haha, hilarious). When Murray says that he was only given his scenes to read, Driver declares that he read the entire screenplay. This kind of humor might appeal to some but to me, it’s actually a big “Fuck you” to the audience, Jarmusch treating us as inferior while patting us on the head because he knows better, he knows what works, and he is a Hollywood filmmaker that can make a movie with A-list stars, even if the final result is a mundane, insipid homage to a genre that Jarmusch can only one day hope to aspire to.
Tilda Swinton plays the new town undertaker and when Murray, Driver, and Sevigny are holed up in the police station while hordes of zombies surround the building, Swinton causally walks up the street, decapitating anything undead that comes her way using her Samurai sword. She borrows Driver’s car and later in the film when Murray and Driver are surrounded by zombies, they see Swinton drive her car into the middle of a field and when she steps out, a UFO appears, hovers above her, beams her up and then takes off into the night sky. Um, okay. When satirical horror movies are done right, for example, “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Scream,” and the aforementioned “Shaun of the Dead,” audiences get in on the joke and have fun with it but here, Jarmusch doesn’t even attempt satire, he goes beyond it, almost like he’s striving to create a new sub-genre within the zombie genre and fails miserably.
If Jarmusch had kept everything on the verge of spilling over into ridiculousness, like that earlier scene between Murray and Driver talking about going “off script,” I feel like the movie might have actually worked. Instead, we are treated to a bevy of talented actors who play themselves in what feels like one big home movie that was not so much directed by a skilled filmmaker but poorly organized over the course of a long weekend. As the old saying goes, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” and unfortunately, or ironically, as the case might be, “The Dead Don’t Die” succumbs to its own shortcomings. Now that is funny!
In theaters Friday, June 14th
