Movie Review - The Dead Don't Die

The Dead Don’t Die ***½ (out of 5) (R) I’ve never thought of art-house icon Jim Jarmusch
as a guy likely to direct a comedy - especially in the realm of Zombie flicks. That made this foray into the genre more of a pleasant surprise. He seemingly channeled his inner Wes Anderson (including the other’s frequent collaborator Bill Murray as a co-star) in crafting a new niche for the walking dead - a droll, understated comedy with the usual amount of gore and a couple of surprises.

Zombie flicks tend to be either serious rampages of splatter, or zany genre-spoofing comedies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. This one finds a mood niche right from Anderson’s wheelhouse (The Grand Budapest Hotel; Moonlight Kingdom; The Royal Tenenbaums, etc.). Murray and Adam Driver play the cops in a small, pastoral town that starts having weird things occur, ranging from electrical interference to disappearing denizens. They are slow to recognize the possibly supernatural source(s) of this unprecedented interruption of their usual tranquility. Tilda Swinton adds a new dimension of strangeness to her impressive array of oddball roles as the new owner of the funeral parlor, speaking her lines with an assortment of foreign accents, making her claimed foreign origin rather suspect.

The plot takes a few turns that one will either love or hate. The more your pre-arrival mindset is prepared for whimsy along with the yucky bits, the better your chances of landing in the former group. This is now my favorite film from writer-director Jarmusch, but that will surely fall within the minority of opinions. Not for the first time. I hope this preparation will allow you to join me.
(6/14/19)