Credit : Abbot Genser / Focus Features © 2019 Image Eleven Productions, Inc.
Jim Jarmusch delivers a slow-paced, dry-witted but freakishly funny tale of zombies, ghouls and the undead; a star-studded affair perfect for its Cannes opening at the 72nd festival. Bill Murray is on top form as the central lead, small-town sheriff Cliff Robertson who has a mild crisis on his hands as the locals start rising from their graves in the local ceremony, much to the dismay of his mild-mannered, though negative-thinking colleague Ronnie (Adam Driver), and weak stomached fellow officer Mindy (Chloë Sevigny).
We open to Cliff and Ronnie pulling up into the woods outside the town of Centerville, somewhere in the present-day States, the duo investigating the disappearance of a some chickens from local farmer Miller – a gun-loving local with a dog named Runfeld who takes pride in wearing a red cap bearing the slogan ‘Make America White Again’. The missing poultry is blamed on Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), a loner who lives in the forest, one known to the lawmen who, rather than arrest him, prefer to warn him time and time again. A period of time lapses and more of the local animals, including pets start to go missing, the reasoning becoming more and more unexplained.
As the narrative progresses, we’re introduced to more of the townspeople; Danny Glover’s hardware store owner Hank; Caleb Landry Jones’ scene-stealing geeky gas station worker Bobby Wiggins (aka Frodo/Bilbo Baggins), and three strangers to the place, including one Selena Gomez who all drift into town as disaster strikes, the three of them forced to stay in a motel for the night. Jarmusch riffs on genre cliche throughout, of course, but his lens is more focussed on modern society with his zombie references sprinkled within – take the point in the feature where we hone in on a group of the undead wandering aimlessly, constantly staring down at mobile devices, or even Iggy Pop and Sara Driver’s ‘coffee zombies’, their only intent to gulp down the black stuff and smash mugs on the floor, one after the other.
Related: Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die to open the 2019 Cannes Film Festival
Jarmusch’s script is constantly self-referencing and unapologetically meta, the director even getting a mention towards the end as the fourth wall is constantly broken. These moments are welcomed, and often laugh-out-loud hilarious, most of the chuckles coming from the exploits of Driver’s character – Star Wars is even mentioned at one stage as one character comments on his possession of a familiar spaceship key-ring. Another stand-out is Tilda Swinton’s Scottish samurai sword-wielding undertaker – a kind of cross between Highlander and Uma Thurman’s Bride in Kill Bill. She’s great.
The film’s sluggish pace may not be for all, but with a lot of matter-of-fact humour, laughs aplenty, superb performances from many familiar faces, and and many of Jarmusch’s familiar hallmarks sprinkled throughout, The Dead Don’t Die is a weird and wonderful and indeed very different zom-com offering something new and definitely worth unearthing.
The Dead Don’t Die review by Paul Heath at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
