The Dead Don't Die
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
Written by: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tom Waits, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Steve Buscemi, Larry Fessenden, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, Eszter Balint, Rosal Colon, Jahi Winston, Taliyah Whitakre, Maya Delmont, Rosie Perez, RZA, Carol Kane, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver
Comedy/Fantasy/Horror - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 June 2019
Written by: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tom Waits, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Steve Buscemi, Larry Fessenden, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, Eszter Balint, Rosal Colon, Jahi Winston, Taliyah Whitakre, Maya Delmont, Rosie Perez, RZA, Carol Kane, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver
Comedy/Fantasy/Horror - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 June 2019
Some of the characters in Jim Jarmusch’s new film, The Dead Don’t Die, are aware enough of zombies to know what to do when zombies show up and start munching on people. You have to decapitate them, remove the head. This is zombie 101. One character even knows he’s in a zombie movie. He read the script, knows the director, and even knows how it will end. This is deadpan writer/director Jim Jarmusch disguising deeper messages underneath layers of pop culture one-liners, puns, and a genre homage. Our world is changing, not for the better, and if we’re not careful, all the dead people are going to wake up and eat us. Oh, and all of us are already zombies - quite meta for what most will categorize as another Shaun of the Dead.
The Dead Don’t Die has a theme song, which is rare for a non-blockbuster semi-experiment. Sturgill Simpson provides an old school country sing along, and if you parse the lyrics close enough, you’ll pick up what Jarmusch is puttin’ down. Most of the characters seem to dig it as well. The CD is on sale at the local one-pump gas station and Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) cannot seem to hear too many spins of the tune. Ronnie is a Deputy to Centerville Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray, Isle of Dogs). Chief Robertson conducts law and order in Ceterville, whose welcome sign claims it’s “A Real Nice Place”, with a light touch. When local right-winger Farmer Bill (Steve Buscemi, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation) accuses Hermit Bob (Tom Waits, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) of stealing a chicken, Chief Robertson checks it out, but lets Hermit Bob alone, even after he fires a makeshift rifle as a warning shot to keep the cops away.
The Dead Don’t Die has a theme song, which is rare for a non-blockbuster semi-experiment. Sturgill Simpson provides an old school country sing along, and if you parse the lyrics close enough, you’ll pick up what Jarmusch is puttin’ down. Most of the characters seem to dig it as well. The CD is on sale at the local one-pump gas station and Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) cannot seem to hear too many spins of the tune. Ronnie is a Deputy to Centerville Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray, Isle of Dogs). Chief Robertson conducts law and order in Ceterville, whose welcome sign claims it’s “A Real Nice Place”, with a light touch. When local right-winger Farmer Bill (Steve Buscemi, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation) accuses Hermit Bob (Tom Waits, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) of stealing a chicken, Chief Robertson checks it out, but lets Hermit Bob alone, even after he fires a makeshift rifle as a warning shot to keep the cops away.
We know Farmer Bill’s political inclination because he wears the recognizable trucker hat proclaiming, “Make America White Again.” The Dead Don’t Die is full of these little in-jokes poking at contemporary society. The zombie awakening and resulting chaos seems to be the McGuffin - it’s a zombie film, but it’s more of an excuse to comment on what Jarmusch sees in our society. The director was in Miami and noticed so many people walking around glued to their cell phones - they ignored traffic, bumped into one another, that they looked like the shuffling undead. Jarmusch still wants to have a good time though. He brings back many of his cast regulars from other films, including RZA (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping), who is a delivery driver for WU-ps. If you know what it means, that is a true highlight.
The catalyst for the zombie apocalypse seems to be polar fracking. Corporations went to both the Earth’s poles, set up fracking operations, and knocked the globe off its axis. The sun rises and sets at odd hours and makes the small town folk of Centerville bring up how the world has been “kinda strange lately” in their small talk. If you ask Officer Ronnie Peterson, though, “This whole thing’s gonna end badly.” There is minimal running around and screaming about zombies - it’s mostly deadpan. Chief Cliff Robertson blows the head off his first zombie but does it in a way that seems like it might not be the worst part of his day. Only one person in town seems truly terrified, Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny, The Dinner). She’s like the audience - why aren’t the rest of the townsfolk freaking out and losing their minds?
Jarmusch has a lot of overt love for the film which launched a thousand other films, Night of the Living Dead. George Romero gets name dropped and a 1968 Pontiac Le Mans gets a lot of attention. How do you make the audience wake up and notice a car? Jarmusch puts Selena Gomez behind the wheel and then has her lean over the trunk while she pumps gas - shrewd move sir. He also named Centerville from a 1971 Frank Zappa movie musical, but that reference is even too obscure for me. The cinephiles in the crowd may get distracted and find themselves intentionally reference hunting. Driver’s Officer Peterson is mighty close to Paterson, the character he played in Jarmusch’s masterpiece Paterson a couple years ago. But most folks are here for the zombies and to watch Tilda Swinton (Avengers: Endgame) expertly wield a samurai sword as she nonchalantly lops off heads.
The zombies are, on one hand, stereotypical in that that stumble along and look for living flesh to chew, but on the other hand, they gravitate to what they enjoyed when they were alive. There are baseball zombies, a tennis zombie, wi-fi zombies, and Iggy Pop (Song to Song) shows up as a coffee zombie. Yet, the enterprise feels downright fatalistic. There is a script and there is no changing it. The world is set on a particular path, and no matter how much you wave your hands, tweet, yell, or cry, humanity’s dead end is in sight. That message may be too much of a bummer for some, but I reckon a majority of the audience will see only the comedy and some indie director they’ve never heard of poking fun at the zombie genre. But that's just me, I could be wrong.
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