Zombie hunters get stuck in art house detour despite promising start

Writer-director Jim Jarmusch takes Adam Driver, Bill Murray and the zombie genre on an art house detour but ultimately gets lost

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THE DEAD DON’T DIE

Three stars

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Starring: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny

Rating: MA15+

Running time: 104 minutes

Verdict: A fun spin on the genre that fails to land

“IT’S all going to end badly.” Of this, Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) is certain — and since the rookie police officer can already identify this offbeat zombie comedy’s theme song, he clearly knows more than he’s letting on.

There’s something oddly reassuring about facing one’s imminent extinction with the man who has channelled both Don Quixote and Kylo Ren AND Bill Murray by your side.

It’s not that their gormless small-town cops are going to be of much practical assistance, but the actors’ deliciously deadpan response to the re-animated corpses that are teeming from Centreville’s graves undercuts the grotesque horror of the situation — which includes multiple decapitations and at least one disembowelling. Further distraction from the impending apocalypse is provided by a string of fun, intertextual references spanning zombie maestro George Romero, inner-city hipsters, and the actors’ own impressive back catalogues.

So much so, that it takes a little while for the bleakness of writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s message to fully sink in.

Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny and Bill Murray in a scene from The Dead Don’t Die.

The Dead Don’t Die is set in a world where it’s too late to take action on climate change and there’s nothing in the cinematic landscape that suggests anything but a contemporary reading.

When sustained fracking at the polar caps knocks the planet off its axis, the two aforementioned police officers are all that stands between their town and the marauding undead hordes. There is a third police officer (Chloe Sevigny), but in a classic piece of gender stereotyping, Mindy Morrison is such a sook that she would have to be classified more as a liability than an asset.

Tilda Swinton’s androgynous contribution — as a strange, Scottish, samurai sword-wielding undertaker — is harder to classify, but it brings with it some welcome comedic relief.

A stand-out ensemble cast, including Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi and Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), fleshes out the supporting roles.

Bill Murray and Adam Driver play out their best scenes in the front seat of their patrol car.

Tom Waits plays the wise, dreadlocked fool otherwise known as Hermit Bob and there’s a fun cameo from Iggy Pop as a rock’n’roll zombie.

Driver and Murray are such relaxed performers, I’d cruise with them almost anywhere — some of The Dead Don’t Die’s best scenes play out in the front seat of the patrol car as the hapless pair drives aimlessly around Centreville’s eerily empty streets.

But Jarmusch hasn’t come up with a satisfactory destination for his long-time collaborators. After taking the genre movie on an art house detour, he winds up in the
sort of narrative cul-de-sac that is more common to undergraduate filmmakers.

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