The Dead Don't Die

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.”   

It Follows

Maika Monroe at Cannes 2014 

IT FOLLOWS             C+                    

USA  (107 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Robert David Mitchell

From the director of THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER (2010), a film that magnifies the adolescent experience of teens in search of love and sex, this Michigan native has shot a campy teen horror film set in the lavish Detroit suburbs.  Borrowing from other horror classics, including an 80’s sounding synth score right out of John Carpenter, the creep master of low budget horror films, none more influential than HALLOWEEN (1978), which reinvented the slasher film set in the safe suburban communities, introducing the idea that “you couldn’t kill evil,” Mitchell opens the film in the undisturbed quiet of a suburban setting when a young girl dressed only in underwear bursts from a front door racing down the street in terror.  Porch lights turn on as onlookers curiously peer out wondering what’s going on.  The girl runs back inside her own home (street address 1492, which coincides with the discovery of America) where her father asks if she’s all right before bolting out the door again without a word, hopping into a car and driving away.  In no time, however, we see her dead and mutilated body left on the beach.  Cut to the screen titles.  This is a film that enjoys doing riffs on other horror films, where it’s largely an homage to the horror genre itself, as the playful spirit throughout is meant for pure enjoyment, using sex as the trigger for the sheer terror that follows.  While this is a low budget, no frills effort that doesn’t rely upon special effects, instead it uses old-fashioned cutting and editing to heighten the element of surprise, using almost entirely unknown actors to leverage the story while recalling the paranoia established from early 1950’s sci-fi B-movies like the original THE THING (1951), a flying saucer ghost story where military experts are unable to eradicate the worldwide threat by this extraterrestrial creature from outer space, leaving the audience hanging on the final warning, “Watch the skies, everywhere!  Keep looking.  Keep watching the skies!”  Here the same message is translated to looking over your shoulder as something is following you. 

19-year old Jay, Maika Monroe from Labor Day (2013), is your typical teenage suburban girl, where her natural good looks attract plenty of male attention, as she’s used to being the object of desire, where normally she’d be fending off flirtatious advances.  Her first sexual encounter, however, with a guy named Hugh (Jake Weary) takes a strange turn for the worse.  Hopping into the back seat of Hugh’s car, she allows him to have sex with her, going into the trunk afterwards to get something, bringing back a chloroform-soaked rag where he drugs her unconscious.  Next thing you know she’s strapped to a wheelchair dressed in her undies where she’s forced to look upon a slowly approaching creature, where Hugh informs her that no one else can see this entity except her, but it will continually follow her until she has sex with someone else and passes this ghostly curse onto them.  Should she allow this creature to touch her, she will die, where the creature will then follow the previous host.  Having diligently informed her, he helps her escape and drops her home afterwards, relieved of the overriding tension he’d been carrying around with him.  For Jay, however, she begins to see phantom figures approaching her, terrifying, half-naked bodies that resemble ghoulish zombies, causing her to continually flee from unseen forces.  These creatures can only walk, however, while she can run or drive away from them, buying some time before they catch up to her.  With the help of her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), along with a handful of friends, they attempt to comprehend her nightmarish visions, keeping her surrounded by their constant presence, trying to protect her from forces they can’t even see.  Her male friends are intrigued by the idea that she needs to have sex with someone else, scoffing at the idea that this could present problems, volunteering their services, exhibiting a kind of fake macho courage in the face of her rising fear, where eventually she is literally petrified.  Continually interchanging the viewer perspective, occasionally the audience can see the creatures (yes, there are more than one), while at other times they remain invisible, equally creepy either way, but also humorous in the way this continually pokes fun at the horror genre. 

Deliberately paced, infused with an ominous atmosphere of inescapable dread, using 360 degree pans to recreate the unsettling feeling of a continual presence of some invisible force lurking nearby, her friends drive her to a nearby lake where they curiously attempt to avoid the approaching terror while also having a little party fun of their own.  The mood quickly changes when Jay’s hair is mysteriously lifted up into the air, and when a friend attempts to intervene he is knocked silly, where they run and take cover in a nearby shed, but the forces attempt to batter the door down while the others can’t see anything.  In this way, the director reminds us of a similar apparition attacking Barbara Hershey in The Entity (1982), based on actual reported events where her son admitted to seeing his mother tossed around the room, and when he attempted to intervene, he was thrown across the room as well by an unseen force.  Like CHRISTINE (1983), these films are inspired by the effects of demonic possession continually haunting their helpless victims, where off-balanced camera angles reflect the victim’s deteriorating mental state.  Immersed in an atmosphere of teenage sexual confusion, where of course there are no adults anywhere to be seen, they are not only forced to confront their fears, but also face the hideous consequences of sex.  Like many horror films, however, the looming presence of panic is much scarier than actually showing a threatening monster, where it all leads up to a climactic swimming pool sequence where they inexplicably attempt to lure these threatening invisible spirits.  In a mix of Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE (1942) and THE THING (1951), with a bit of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008) thrown in for good measure, it all grows a bit ridiculous by the end when Jay’s friends devise a plan to eliminate the monster at a dilapidated indoor swimming pool on the other side of the tracks, an area in stark contrast to the sanitized suburbia of their homes.  While it’s obvious the director is throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this mix of the macabre and the terrifying, creating a demonic ghost story that is more about ghoulish vampires and the power of suggestion, but it’s always the kids themselves left to their own devices that must restore balance and order into their world after it’s been turned upside down.  Much of this Carpenteresque parody is a pale imitation of the real thing, where sex and horror have always been an unhealthy mix onscreen, though the idea of a girl trying to avoid having sex altogether is a novel approach, nonetheless while this has its moments, it never adds up to much, failing to get below the surface and feels more like a bunch of sequences thrown together. 

Super 8

SUPER 8                     B

USA  (112 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  J.J. Abrams

Much like this director paid tribute to the Star Trek TV era, especially good at catching the various personality traits of the major players, this film pays tribute to the era of Spielberg, including several of his notable movies.  Again, Abrams does some things extremely well, like catch the E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) innocent mood of the kids who continually hang out together with no adult supervision, eventually tracing the presence of an alien presence in the community while also establishing a great build up of suspense for the horrible presence of an unseen monster in JAWS (1975), not to mention the U.S. military creating a diversionary catastrophe from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) which sends the local community into mass hysteria while covering up their real mission, which remains top secret.  While there is also a shared love for big box-office special effects, like Abrams last film, there is an over-reliance on loud explosions, as if this is the only way to cause adrenaline rushes, yet this kind of destructive mayhem exists throughout the film, led by Noah Emmerich, perennial bad guy who heads the secret Air Force unit, a guy who will stop at nothing in supposedly tracking down public enemy number one, their top secret monster they've been keeping under wraps that is suddenly missing and unleashed on the public, refusing to share basic information, even as it destroys communities and ravages the countryside.  Unlike Spielberg, this has a darker menace throughout, as there are constant images of death, demolition, and destruction, where these kids are running through the streets alone trying to avoid getting killed, which is a far cry from being caught by their parents for doing something they’re not allowed.  Like BAMBI (1942), the first Disney film to kill off a helpless fawn’s mother, the audience quickly discovers that Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney with a slight Ralph Macchio resemblance), the lead child’s mother has also been killed, leaving him alone with his distant and self-absorbed father, Kyle Chandler as the Sheriff’s Deputy, a man caught up in the town’s hysteria with no answers to quell the maddening voices. 

Set in 1979, the film starts out innocently enough with a group of middle school kids led by Riley Griffiths as Charles, who are trying to make a special effects Super 8 zombie movie to enter into a local film contest, though they feel compelled to strain for greater effects, since 15 and 16-year olds will also be competing.  Sneaking out at night, they meet at the railroad tracks, including the presence of Elle Fanning as Alice, the cute girl that the boys think would never talk with them, surprising them all with her own rebellious streak.  Much like Drew Barrymore in E.T., Fanning is a joy to watch, showing maturity beyond her years, not to mention a charming talent in front of a camera, where despite playing a ghoulish zombie, her beguiling presence unsettles the boys who have been best friends for years.  As if to accentuate this imbalance, they witness a horrible train accident, where a train carrying Air Force top secret materials gets derailed in spectacular fashion, where they each defy death and somehow survive while unknowingly capturing the event on film, making their escape before anyone is detected, vowing to keep it a secret, as they believe something horrible will track down their families.  First animals go missing, then appliances strangely disappear, entire car engines are pulled out of cars before people start mysteriously disappearing as well, including the sheriff, where only weird noises can be heard in the dark before a violent attack of some kind snatches its prey.  This leaves Joe’s father in charge of these strange inexplicable random events, but the military finds his incessant questioning curiously disturbing, as if this was somehow preventing them from carrying out their mission.  Unfortunately the warped world of the adults is an unpleasant contrast to the more stellar ideas and enthusiasm shown by the playfulness of the kids, who inherently trust one another, as opposed to the world of adults where suspicion and the unending use of violence reigns. 

Despite the plentiful use of special effects sequences, the best thing in the film is the smaller-world interaction of the kids, whose unique personalities add humor and intrigue to the story, where they’re a close-knit group that draws the audience in with their appeal, led by Joe, who can’t stop thinking about Alice, the real heroine of the story.  It’s impossible, by the way, not to think of Mark Borchardt from Chris Smith’s AMERICAN MOVIE (1999), striving for years to finish his low-budget zombie flick Coven, played entirely by friends and family, which is pretty much what these kids are up to as well.  But when the world around them goes crazy, with people going missing, a military presence taking over the city, and several events witnessed which defy gravity or known science, these kids, perhaps without realizing it at first, feel they are on a mission to save the world, turning this into a Mission Impossible (Abrams directed the 3rd) kind of episode where they are driven to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles, but done with a charming enjoyment and intelligent humor.  What doesn’t work, balanced against this obvious fun, is the unpleasant deviousness of the American military, even resorting to secret arrests and images of torture, all of which defy the efforts of this spirited group, where the American military imposes a larger threat of violence than the actual monster.  Granted, this film reflects the mindset of the culture in the late 70’s, where Watergate, lies about secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia, lies about Generals boosting the number of enemy combatants killed in action in order to justify more troops, and the tortuous end of the Vietnam era did contribute to a general distrust of governmental authority, which included the military.  Still the heavy handed tone of militarism gone wrong, or in the wrong hands, sends this barreling down the wrong track, undermining their own monster special effects with a montage of non-stop military explosions of death and destruction, a whirlwind of exaggerated psychotic mayhem that was never part of the original story, that only detracts from the initial innocent hilarity of making that confounding zombie movie with a cast of overeager kids, and also kills the suspense leading up to the appearance of the monster, who has unfortunately been upstaged by the way over the top, uncalculated madness of humankind.