Sunday, November 8, 2020

The Dead Don't Die


I thought that I might enjoy "The Dead Don't Die", despite the mixed reviews, because I like some zombie movies. I thought maybe with Bill Murray and Adam Driver it would be good. 

The humor is really deadpan. The characters are all lacking in emotion and are stiff like they are walking through some bad dream. The odd humor was maybe going to work for me until they got to the first gory scene which was over the top and too much. Still, the characters remain stiff and deadpan. This never changes, so the joke wears off. The movie gives us no reason to care about these characters.

The film breaks the 4th wall by having the characters reference that they are in a movie. Early on they hear the movie theme song on the radio and refer to it as the theme song. Near the end, they make references to the script in a throwaway joke.

This could have been a good horror movie or a good comedy, but the mix of the two is completely uninspired. It has nothing new to add. There is almost no suspense, which is the point of a horror film. The only thing I liked was the quirky characters and this just wasn't enough.

Better movies like this are "Shawn of the Dead" and "Cockneys vs Zombies", both of which are pretty entertaining and give us interesting characters. Maybe the British know how to mix humor and horror.

Rating: D. Don't waste your time.