peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2019 10 09 TheDeadDontDie

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

Wed, Oct 09, 2019./noise/movies | Link

With Dave at The Ritz after a Viet Street Food lunch in Marrickville. About ten people total came to the 4:40pm session (eight more than I expected). We sat five rows from the front. I went in prepped for a not-enough-ideas Jarmusch effort generally inferior to his last memorable one, and was therefore less disappointed than Dave who had expectations of it being intrinsically worth watching. Ultimately the many missed opportunities and loose ends were too frustrating. The frame is a Twin Peaks-ish small town where the cops (Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny) have few ideas on how to deal with a zombie apocalypse. Tom Waits narrates as a foraging hermit. Steve Buscemi's "make America white again" obnoxious trolling is never cashed, and neither is Caleb Landry Jones as someone who might have had a novel angle on the zombie mind. The children just evaporate, as does Tilda Swinton's katana-wielding Scots lady (and whatever did she do to that computer?). There are a few mild jokes (coffee! wifi!) and a lot of shrugging judgement.

A. O. Scott.