Summary

• The Dead Don't Die surprised audiences the wrong way in 2019, delivering a bone-dry art movie instead of the star-studded horror comedy people expected.
• Director Jim Jarmusch's film faced criticism five years ago but is now a streaming hit on Max, defying expectations.
• The movie serves as an allegory for apathy in the face of impending realities like climate catastrophe. The zombie comedy is the furthest thing you can imagine from something like Zombieland, but is great in its own weird way.

It's been five years since one of the most acclaimed American directors released a film, perhaps because it was an anomaly in his career and one of his worst-reviewed movies. That would be Jim Jarmusch with the 2019 film, The Dead Don't Die. The movie stands out from most of Jarmusch's work as a slightly bigger project with special effects and $3 million of marketing, not to mention its young megastars like Selena Gomez, Adam Driver, and Austin Butler. It's also a horror comedy led by Bill Murray and had an exciting trailer with 14 million views, so when you combine all of those details, it makes sense that audiences were expecting something very different from what was released. The 38% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes certainly indicates that.

However, unlike almost every Jarmusch film, the critics didn't like The Dead Don't Die too much, either, with a 55% score after 317 reviews. And even the positive (or 'fresh') reviews are mostly glowless. "It has no bite whatsoever," writes Keith Garlington, "so we’re left with the cast who are enough to save the film but just barely," while Wenlei Ma says, "It's mildly amusing." Hardly the enthusiastic ambassadors, these two.

Now, however, The Dead Don't Die is climbing out from the grave of mediocrity and topping the streaming charts on Max (formerly known as HBO Max). The film has consistently been in the top 10 streamed movies on Max, ultimately advancing to the third most-streamed movie and remaining there for more than 48 hours (as of the time of writing).

What Is The Dead Don't Die About, and What Is the Point?

The horror comedy is set in a small American town named Centerville, where the police force is made up of three people —Bill Murray as Chief Cliff Robertson (yes, like the actor), Adam Driver as Officer Ronnie Peterson (like the Swedish Formula 1 driver?), and Chloë Sevigny as Officer Mindy Morrison (like... Jim?). They ultimately join forces with the town's Irish samurai mortician, Zelda Winston (played by Tilda Swinton), to try and save the town from a sudden zombie apocalypse caused by the Earth going off its axis.

Steve Buscemi, Donald Glover, Tom Waits, Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, RZA, Carol Kane, Larry Fessenden, Sturgill Simpson, and Charlotte Kemp Muhl also star in what seems on paper like an awesome crowd-pleaser. But if you're unfamiliar with Jim Jarmusch, be forewarned — he's a brilliant but acquired taste. As such, The Dead Don't Die wasn't what most viewers expected, and was instead a deadpan, meta, and utterly absurdist meditation on climate change, fatalism, and how we've become ignorant and complacent about the things that actually affect us.

Jim Jarmusch Does Not Make Movies Audiences Expect

Jarmusch is famous among cinephiles and hipsters for four decades of quirky, iconoclastic films like Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Limits of Control, Dead Man, and Mystery Train. Among his masterpieces, he's mostly made existential comedies, desert-dry movies about disaffected people and the strange, transcendental beauty of art and human connection. He's frequently considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Jim Jarmusch directed his first horror film in 2013 with the romantic vampire drama, Only Lovers Left Alive. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, and John Hurt, the film was a huge critical success and sparked Jarmusch's interest in the horror genre. He's a big fan of George Romero and Night of the Living Dead, and The Dead Don't Die absolutely references that film and Dawn of the Dead. He's also praised John Carpenter and Mario Bava in the past.

The problem with the horror genre is that it comes with immediate presuppositions for people. Audiences correlate horror with tension, jump scares, gore, and action. Most of these things are completely absent from The Dead Don't Die, which is more of an allegory about apathy and the tendency for humanity to consume distractions in an attempt to avoid the inevitable. The film is ultimately a sad look at how we ignore the reality that's coming — climate catastrophe, corporate takeover, total alienation — and how we've zombified ourselves. In our opinion, it's a great film, a vibe of its own. You can watch The Dead Don't Die on Max through the link below:

Watch on Max