See, here's the problem.
There are two ways of going into
watching The Dead Don’t Die. One is
by its title and the other is by its director. The former is simple enough—as evident by its title (and most likely its
trailer) this is a zombie film, and it will attract people that enjoy the
zombie genre. The problem is, this isn't a
regular zombie film, it's not even a regular horror-comedy zombie film, which leads me to the latter
reason. Jim Jarmusch is an unorthodox
director even by independent film going standards. His films hardly ever follow conventional
storytelling tropes and what little structure they have that resembles
conventionality is told in the upmost easy-going of manners. His films take their time to varying degrees—sometimes
modestly paced, other times excruciatingly slow.
The Dead Don’t Die is the former in pacing but that still doesn't
mean mainstream audiences, used to faster pacing, will easily accept it. And even then, they're going to have to get
through the abundance of nonchalant meta-humor throughout the film. Yet if one can accept its leisurely pacing
and incredibly self-aware comedy as the film’s fundamental essence then The
Dead Don’t Die will be a delightfully zany time.
The Dead Don’t Die takes
place in the intentionally generic small town of Centerville, “A Really Nice Place”
as its welcome sign says. It turns out
that polar fracking has caused the Earth to be pulled off its axis, creating a
variety of chaotic events such as the sun remaining out in the evening, watches
stopping, animals going nuts, oh, and the dead rising. Being a Jim Jarmusch film, however, the
zombies take their sweet-ass time actually showing up—twenty-eight minutes for a brief
first appearance, and fifty-seven minutes (in an hour and forty-minutes film)
before they become a permanent fixture in the town. The film instead focuses on its various
colorful residents and visitors, all likable characters who almost all eventually
suffer grisly deaths to the zombies.
Deliveryman Dean (RZA) at one point tells the gas station owner Bobby
(Caleb Landry Jones) to “appreciate the details”. A core trait with Jim Jarmusch films is the
effort placed in the subtle details of each scene. Here, the detailing takes the form of homage towards Romero's Living Dead series, complete with references to settings (like Pittsburgh), objects,
people, the undead, and/or just flat-out mentioning the films. Take this hilariously bizarre conversation
between several town residents over some travelers:
Resident 1: They just checked in. Hipsters from
the big city.
Resident 2: Yeah?
Resident 1: Yep. My educated guess would be
Pittsburgh. They got that urban style, you know.
Resident 3: Oh, well, those plates are from
Ohio, so my educated guess would be Cleveland.
Resident 1: Oh. Cleveland. Hmm.
Resident 2: Yeah, Cleveland.
Resident 3: That girl's part Mexican.
Resident 2: Really? How can you tell?
Resident 3: I have an affinity for Mexicans.
They're, like, my favorite people. I love Mexico. I've been down there twice.
The zombies are your standard Night
of the Living Dead-style—sluggish, desiring human flesh, drinking
coffee...oh wait. Yeah, in this universe
when a person comes back as a zombie, they are attracted to what they liked
most in life, for example drinking coffee.
There’s a scene where two zombies awkwardly smile at each other while
trying to drink coffee—possibly a zombie way of awkwardly flirting—right after
having gruesomely devoured two of the diner's residents. Instead of saying “brains” like
zombies are stereotypically known for (in the past at least), here they just
say a single phrase of something that they desired when alive, such as coffee,
wi-fi, Bluetooth, guitar, etc. It’s
clear-cut symbolism of humanity’s insatiable craving for material objects.
The grisly murders at the diner bring
in the local police aka the film's main characters: Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill
Murray) and Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver; and I wouldn’t be surprised
if the last name Peterson is a reference to Driver’s character Paterson from Jarmusch’s masterpiece Paterson). The entire sequence of them arriving on the
scene and investigating is absolute comedy gold. Cliff shows up first on the scene, meeting
with diner customer Hank Thompson (Danny Glover) who's incredibly distressed
about the situation. Cliff goes in and sees
the mutilated corpses of two people he knew well, silently leaving the diner
with a somewhat stunned expression:
Hank: Uh, wh-what the hell was it? A wild
animal? Uh, several wild animals?
Cliff: I don't know… But whatever it was,
it even smashed the coffeepots.
Ronnie then arrives in his
comically small Red Prius. He too goes
to sees the corpses, gives a childish “oh yuck” to the sight, and walks out to
ask if it was a wild animal or several wild animals. Finally, the third member of the town’s police
force Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny) arrives. The straight man of the three cops, she
reacts exactly how one would expect a normal human to react to the situation—unlike
her more unperturbed coworkers—coming out looking quite disturbed by the sight:
Mindy: Uh, no, no, I didn't need to see
that. Was it a wild animal? Or several wild animals? Cliff, is that really Fern
and Lily in there?
Cliff: Uh, no. That was Fern and
Lily,
Cliff asks Ronnie what he thinks
about the situation and, completely straight-faced, Ronnie replies “I’m thinking
zombies.”
Ronnie is an odd one, to say the
least, and it becomes evidently clear that he’s well aware of being in a film. The film’s opening credits play a song called The
Dead Don’t Die by Sturgill Simpson.
The song plays constantly in the film, with everyone recognizing it as a
classic save for Cliff:
Cliff: What is that song, Ronnie?
Ronnie: It's "The Dead Don't
Die." By Sturgill Simpson.
Cliff: Sturgill Simpson? Why does it sound
so familiar?
Ronnie: Well, 'cause it's the theme song.
Cliff: The theme song?
Ronnie: Yeah.
When the zombies really start to
attack—the news reporting the grisly murders being a possible attack from a wild animal or
several wild animals—Ronnie reacts completely nonchalant to the whole ordeal,
casually offering to take out the zombies, chopping off dead people to ensure
that they don't come back, and continuously, casually nothing how “This isn't gonna end
well.”:
Mindy: Guys... shouldn't we be telling
each other that it's all gonna be okay? That this will all go away, like a bad
dream? Ronnie?
Ronnie: Gee, Mindy, I'm not sure I can say
that.
Mindy: Cliff? Please?
Cliff: It's all gonna be okay, Mindy.
Maybe it'll all just go away, like a bad dream.
Ronnie: ...I doubt it.
Cliff also seems somewhat aware of
their fictional predicament, though not to the extent of Ronnie:
Cliff: I was supposed to retire. Two years
ago.
Ronnie: I know. Why didn't you?
Cliff: What?
Ronnie: Retire two years ago.
Cliff: Are we improvising here?
Ronnie: No, I was just asking. But I probably
know the answer anyway.
Ronnie even has a Star Wars keychain that
the town’s funeral home operator Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton) note as being excellent
fiction, causing Ronnie to blush as if taking a compliment. Zelda is a fascinatingly bizarre character—a
Scottish Kill Bill-style samurai that is equally nonchalant about the apocalyptic situation, casually walking through the streets chopping off zombies’s
heads like she was out for a Sunday stroll.
Eventually, Cliff gets fed up with Ronnie
noting how things aren’t going to end well, asking how he knows this and
resulting in one of the most meta conversations I've witnessed in film:
Cliff: May I ask you a question?
Ronnie: Sure. Ask away.
Cliff: You have been saying that this is
all gonna end badly, from the very beginning, over and over. So, what made you
so f***ing sure of that? How did you know everything in advance?
Ronnie: Do you really want to know?
Cliff: Yes! I want to know. I really want
to know!
Ronnie: Okay. I know because I've read the
script.
Cliff: You... read the script. The whole
script? All of it?
Ronnie: Yeah. Jim gave me the whole script.
Cliff: He only gave me our scenes. I never
saw a complete script. After all... I've done for that guy. And it's a lot that
you don't even know about. What a dick.
The only thing more bizarre than
this conversation is when Zelda shows up, is circled by all the zombies, and then
gets beamed up into a U.F.O. as both Ronnie and Cliff watch in complete bafflement:
Cliff: Are you seeing what I'm seeing?
Ronnie: I think I am.
Cliff: Was that in the script?
Ronnie: No. Not the one I read.
The pair proceed to follow the
remaining script—at least the one Ronnie read—and fight against the zombies in
a vain yet nonchalantly epic battle, taking out all the previous residents of Centerville
except for Hank as Cliff can’t bring himself to kill him:
Cliff: sees zombified Hank Ah, Hank. I'm
so sorry, brother. I just can't do it. You take care of yourself. zombified
Hank waves and then walks off
The Dead Don’t Die is a
hilariously bats***, creative film. Jim Jarmusch puts his own stamp on the zombie genre by turning it inside out, right before mixing it into a blender.full of bizarre combinations. The film has many things going for it—hilariously zany meta-humor, elements of
political and philosophical ideology that ultimately end up being summed up as
“What a f***ed-up world”, and an earnest tribute to the Romero era of
zombies. The film will not be for every
fan of the zombie genre yet will be for fans of Jim Jarmusch (or ginger root
as my spell check tried correcting me) and those that can accept the film
for what it’s trying to be and not what would typically be expected. Whatever the case, it's undeniable that The Dead Don't Die is one of a kind,
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