Review of The Dead Don't Die (2019) by Bertaut1 — 28 Jul 2019

Very funny, very peculiar, somewhat didactic.

Writer/director Jim Jarmusch making a zombie comedy? Who saw that coming? He's certainly made genre films in the past – Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) - and usually, he's very successful at grafting his worldview onto the generic tropes. With The Dead Don't Die, however, he doesn't do quite as well; this is very much a Jarmusch film before a zombie movie. However, I enjoyed it nonetheless, and although it shifts into didacticism in the last scene, nothing that Jarmusch says is incorrect, even if he says it a little inelegantly.

In the town of Centerville (pop. 738), strange things are afoot; the sun is still shining at 8pm, people's watches have stopped, no one can get a signal on their phone, and the dead are rising from the grave. Very much an ensemble piece, the residents of Centerville include police chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray); deputies Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny); undertaker Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton); farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi); vagrant Hermit Bob (Tom Waits); hardware store owner Hank Thompson (Danny Glover); gas station owner Bobby Wiggins (Caleb Landry Jones); delivery man Dean (RZA); recently deceased town drunk Mallory O'Brien (Carol Kane); motel owner Danny Perkins (Larry Fessenden); journalist Posie Juarez (Rosie Perez); and a pair of coffee loving ghouls (Sara Driver and Iggy Pop).

If The Dead Don't Die has a single salient theme, it's apathy; the zombies represent us, sleepwalking our way towards our own extinction. Jarmusch suggests that as a society, we've become lazy, instinctual, addicted to things that don't matter (the zombies hunt for coffee, WiFi, Siri, Chardonnay, Xanax, and "Fashion"). Indeed, in this sense, one of the film's more subtle (and interesting) points is that the best way to remain outside such societal stagnation is to remain on the edges of the social contract – the characters who do best against the zombies are the socially ostracised Zelda, three kids in a juvenile detention centre, and the philosophical Hermit Bob.

Of course, using zombies as vehicles for social satire isn't exactly new; George A. Romero did it as far back as Night of the Living Dead (1968), which is more about endemic racism than zombies. He did it to even greater effect in Dawn of the Dead (1978), where he targeted materialistic vapidity. In this tradition, The Dead Don't Die has its eye very much on the climate change-denying administration in Washington; for example, Frank is introduced wearing a MAGA-style baseball cap with a "Keep America White Again" logo, whilst his dog is called Rumsfeld. And whilst it remains a comedy, much of what The Dead Don't Die says is deadly serious – the planet is dying; the polar ice caps are melting, and with them, the future of our species; universal scientific guarantees of impending extinction are largely ignored, whilst the idiots in power discard the warnings of their own people, strip away environmental protections, and continually confuse weather and climate.

One element of the film that's especially interesting is the Pirandellian self-reflexivity, with some of the characters aware that they're in a movie. For example, Ronnie refers to Sturgill Simpson's "The Dead Don't Die" as "the theme song" (which it is), and later assures Cliff he knows that things will end badly because he's read the script. This upsets Cliff because he was only allowed to read the scenes in which he appeared. And the point of all this self-reflexivity? I'd say that Jarmusch is using it in the Brechtian sense to ensure the audience remains consciously critical, more engaged with the narrative on an intellectual level than an emotional level.

However, there are problems. In last ten minutes, Jarmusch abandons all semblance of narrative, becoming very preachy and didactic. Another issue is the humour, which is very Jarmuschian – all awkward stilted dialogue, deadpan one-liners, and subtle winking at the audience. Some of the political themes are also underexplored. For example, Frank's MAGA hat is a pointed critique of Trump, but to what end? Also, as Jarmusch himself is aware, the film isn't really saying anything that Romero hasn't already said.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Dead Don't Die. It's certainly nowhere near Jarmusch's best, and I can understand people who dislike it; a lot of the themes have been explored before, a lot of the jokes have been made before, and it's neither a terrifying thriller nor a self-conscious meta-comedy. Having said that, however, the socio-political commentary is undeniably relevant and the cast is universally impressive. And ultimately, you may have a problem with the manner with which the film communicates its message, but that doesn't alter the fact that that message is absolutely legitimate.