Director Jim Jarmusch
THE DEAD DON’T DIE C+
USA Sweden (105 mi)
2019 d: Jim Jarmusch Official
site [United States]
Kind of a cheesy and lightweight comedic genre film by this
director that somehow got selected to open the Cannes Film Festival, receiving
less than stellar reviews, surviving apparently on the fumes of this director’s
reputation, though it has a remarkable all-star cast. It’s not a particularly good zombie flick,
but it distinguishes itself by being reverential to the masters of the genre,
where snide and sarcastic references to George Romero’s subversive commentary
run throughout the film, but there’s very little actual story. Instead it’s more of a mood piece that uses
apocalyptic zombie references to comment on oversaturated consumer culture,
with individuals spending all their time on self-centered social media, where
their smartphones are literally attached to their bodies, inseparable, doing
all the heavy lifting that their brains used to do, rendering mankind into a
brainless state of confusion completely reliant upon their electronic gadgetry
to survive, without which they have no significant life to speak of. This comment on passivity may be the key to
the film, as too much of it lends itself to overly dire circumstances,
suggesting a certain fatalism (like the current state of our nation), where we
begin to resemble the walking dead. Jarmusch
already made a vampire flick, Only
Lovers Left Alive (2013), a gangster flick, GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE
SAMURAI (1999), and a western, Dead Man
(1995), so he’s tinkered with genre films before, but this is easily his least
effective as it barely scratches the surface.
In typical Jarmusch style, however, the film is so deadpan that the
characters themselves barely come alive throughout the film, which may itself
be a commentary on the state of our lives, where the high point may be a mysterious
conversation that makes mocking, self-reverential humor about the director
himself, which is completely out of character from the rest of the film, or
even this director’s career, with Bill Murray as himself calling him “a dick”
at one point after he feels slighted by what he perceives as unequal treatment,
offering behind-the-scenes insight into the personal relationships, which is
amusing, but it can’t save this film from its startling deficiencies, where
many may find this a complete waste of time.
It does, however, have its own theme song, Sturgill Simpson - The Dead
Don't Die [Official Video] - YouTube (3:51), heard on the radio by two cops
making their rounds, Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and his partner Ronnie
Peterson (Adam Driver), where the chief thinks it sounds very familiar, only to
be told by his partner that “it’s the theme song,” where everyone in the film
feels a connection to the song, as if they’ve all heard it before, giving the
film a déjà vu theme. Set in the tiny
Pennsylvania town of Centerville (from Frank Zappa’s 1971 surreal mockumentary 200
MOTELS), population 738, described as “a real nice place” on the sign driving
in, while Zappa’s film describes the town as “a real nice place to raise your
kids up.” When it doesn’t get dark at
night despite the lateness of the time, with watches and cellphones all going
dead, there are signs of an impending apocalypse, though few are capable of
anticipating the enormity of the situation, despite calamitous warnings from
newscaster Posie Juarez (Rosie Perez) that no one takes seriously, as who
really believes in a zombie infestation?
When half-eaten bodies are discovered laying in their own
blood on the floor of the diner the next morning, the chief knows something is
up, but it takes Ronnie to figure it out for him, as all signs point to zombies,
the undead, ghouls. Meanwhile, a local
gas station run by Bobby Wiggins (Caleb Landry Jones) is also a haven for the
occult and all things weird and strange, selling vintage comic books and horror
paraphernalia, where he’s also an expert on how to deal with the undead. It’s surprising that in times of real
apocalyptic need, it’s the fringe characters that know how to survive, as the
rest are overly predictable conformists who refuse to believe this day is any
different than any other. This film is
more about cameo appearances than storyline, where there’s a certain delight in
who shows up next. Rounding out the
police crew is the straight-laced Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny), who’s a bit
freaked out by what she sees, serving the role of the screamer when the time is
right. While there’s never any real
accumulation of suspense, the first zombies we’re introduced to happen to be
Iggy Pop and Sara Driver, Jarmusch’s longtime companion rarely ever appearing
in his films, not since MYSTERY TRAIN (1989).
They also happen to be caffeine addicts, where we learn zombies return
back to what they liked best about the living, mumbling out a desire for
“coffee,” with Carol Kane making an appearance as an undead with a thirst for
“chardonnay,” or Sturgill Simpson has a hankering for a “guitar,” while others
cry out for “Xanax” or “Wi-Fi,” carrying iPhones that are mysteriously charged
even though no one else can get a signal.
When a group of unsuspecting kids driving on the road head into town to
fill up on gas, Zoe (Selena Gomez), Zach (Luka Sabbat) and Jack (Austin
Butler), described by locals as hipsters from the city, they happen to be driving
a Pontiac LeMans, the same vehicle featured in Romero’s THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD (1968). Meanwhile there’s a group
of teenagers housed at the Juvenile detention center, Maya Delmont as Stella,
Taliyah Whitaker as Olivia, and Jahi Winston as Geronimo, with the running gag
being these big beefy security guards continually remove Geronimo from the
women’s quarters as a violation of rules, as the three of them are inseparable
and continue to hang out together. Glued
to the television news reports, their astute commentary is among the more
intelligent in the film, completely unrecognized by anyone else, apparently,
though they have the wherewithal to survive in the end when everyone else
fails. The star of the show, however, is
none other than Tilda Swinton as Zelda Winston, the funeral home director, who
weirdly has her own habits that others find strange (Murray attributes it to
her being Scottish), like decorating the corpses in colorful make-up, speaking
to them as old friends, like playing with dolls, or always walking in straight
lines, or better yet her mysterious samurai sword routine performed before a
golden image of Buddha, carrying the sword with her wherever she goes, easily
decapitating zombies as she walks down the street unobstructed. Her fearlessness sets her apart from the
rest, easily mingling with the undead, viewing them as little different from
the living.
In a film where irony is like a foreign language, accentuated
by the music from Jarmusch’s own band Sqürl, what’s clear is no one has a
strategy of what to do while under zombie attack, as handling a few is no
problem, but handling a surge of relentlessly attacking living corpses feasting
on your flesh is another story altogether, as they tend to overpower even those
with the best survival instincts, where the best plan seems to be to stay away
from them altogether. Unlike Ruben
Fleischer’s ZOMBIELAND (2009), still the most commercially successful zombie
flick of all time (a sequel is coming out in the fall), zombies are not used
for target practice, or wiped out in record numbers like playing some demolition
derby video game. Instead they become
recognizable figures come back to haunt the living, including some of the
living characters seen earlier in the film who return later in the swarms of
the undead, where it’s hard not to still think of them as human and among the
living, plaguing the consciousness of those that knew them. This is a new twist on a familiar theme, but
Jarmusch doesn’t do much with it.
Instead he uses a social misfit narrator to comment on what we’re
seeing, Tom Waits as Hermit Bob, a scruffy outsider resembling Bigfoot who’s
been living in the woods for decades, becoming a mythical creature, but also an
expert on survival. Watching it all
through binoculars safely tucked away behind the trees, he offers a cryptic condemnation
of the modern world, revealing a society that “sold its soul for a
Gameboy.” Jarmusch seems to be doing the
same, using Steve Buscemi as Farmer Miller, an acknowledged racist wearing a red
Trump MAGA hat that instead says “Make America White Again,” as he’s a
loathsome and despicable character that no one likes, getting his just due by
the end, completely clueless about the undead, where he sees no difference
between the living and the dead, hating them all, making vile comments about
trespassers on his property while they start eating him alive. According to the news reports, all of this
was caused by the unrestricted access energy companies had to drive exploratory
holes into the earth through polar fracking, actually causing a shift of the
Earth’s axis, literally altering the world as we know it, opening a Pandora’s
Box of mythological plagues and turmoil suddenly unleashed into the world. In this version, zombies spill burnt ash
instead of blood, and must be decapitated to die, craving the blood and flesh
of humans for which they have an unquenchable thirst. While this may attempt to resemble
Hitchcock’s The
Birds (1963) in terms of a nightmarish doomsday scenario, what’s missing is
any element of dread or suspense, or a feeling like zombies are taking over the
world. It never really establishes that
kind of momentous impact, feeling more like a bedtime story where it will all
be different when we awake, perhaps needing an amusing end coda that never
comes, instead leaving viewers sucked into a B-movie end-of-the-world scenario
where it all just “ends badly.”
