THE DEAD DON’T DIE (2019) by Jim Jarmusch
“The greatest zombie cast ever disassembled”
I still feel weird when I go to a cinema and what I see on the screen doesn’t look too much like what I had in my mind. That film that I had made in the head based on the trailer it’s not like that. That’s what happens with the deceptive and boring “The dead don’t die”, and it’s something I’ve read in some more movies reviews. Jim Jarmusch builds a boring, parsimonious story, slow to the point of exasperation, with some attempt at humor – the zombies looking for Wifi – and little else.
In the town of Centerville the dead have come back to life, come out of their graves or are reborn in the morgue. All this is given by fracking, or at least that is what the director lets us see with little finesse. I could say how interesting the tribute to Romero looks, although the film has a life of its own beyond the director of “Night of the Living Dead ” (1968), but it’s so obvious that its effectiveness is reduced.
The main characters lack plot depth, there is no chemistry between them, nor Adam Driver, too corseted, or Bill Murray who seems intent on playing again and again the same inexpressive character and dispersed in each one of his new films. Zombies that return to life and their vices, those that depended on life, a world that is heading towards its end, as Driver having read the script and anticipating that “this will not end well”. Centerville is humanity; a humanity that knows its final apocalyptic and that knows its multiple vices.
Jarmusch talks about capitalism, the irremissible climate change and the aliens; but it does it in a transversal way and a little bit run over way. He uses humor in a self-referential way, breaks the fourth wall to tell phrases about the film itself with a surprise effect on the audience, and from there, the plot becomes predictable – even more so – and there is no where to take it. The most remarkable are without a doubt the zombies, their make-up, imitating the living dead classic of Romero, together with the treatment of photography when they appear or walk through the meadows, are the best of a film that with other actors, and a little less than absurd jokes, it would have been a very good movie, but that part takes you out of the film.
Finally, highlight that the song of the film hits you right away, “The dead don’t die” by Sturgill Simpson, is like that music that doesno’t get out of your head, like that home you want to return to.
Traducido por: Eduardo Llorente.
Our rating: (3/5)
