The Dead Don’t Die (a film review by: Mark Leeper).
The dead are yet once again back from themselves when the Earth pitches a little off its axis and in zombie movie scientific logic this causes the dead to return to life in a rural central US town.
Seeing this all happen around them two cop car police, Chief Cliff Robertson (actor Bill Murray) and Officer Ronnie Peterson (actor Adam Driver) are trying to maintain peace. Peterson pessimistically reminds Robertson that any situation looks like it will end badly. Jim Jarmusch writes and directs.
Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
This was probably more fun to make than it was to watch.
The so-called ‘zombie’ sub-genre of horror film has become firmly entrenched in the national consciousness since George Romero booted it up in 1968 with ‘Night Of The Living Dead’. So many zombie films have been made in that the fund of potential ideas has been depleted and now satiric send-ups of the zombie films are much more numerous enough to constitute their own sub-genre.
Comedic zombie films almost certainly outnumber the serious ones. Part of the reason is that a zombie film costs a pittance to produce one. It takes very little resource to make a zombie film. You need some old clothing and some stage make-up. After that small investment all you need is the camera and a makeup artist. It is a very low starting investment.
It is probably impossible to copyright invented zombie lore so we see ideas freely flow from one film to another. For example, in ‘Day Of The Dead’ (1985) the dead continue to desire the same merchandise they wanted in life. That idea has rarely reappeared in the interim, but the same idea returns in ‘The Dead Don’t Die’.
There are a few high-profile cameo parts so the viewer can call out when he recognises someone like a Danny Glover or Steve Buscemi. For the most part, the cameo segments do very little to tell or advance the story. The story can be presented cheaply and filmed in a party atmosphere.
I rate ‘Day Of The Dead’ a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
© Mark Leeper 2019