This is definitely going to end badly.
The Dead Don't Die is the new film from American auteur Jim Jarmusch and bears immediate comparison with Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. Both are inspired by George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, both are broadly comic and both treat the zombie concept as allegory for various social ills. But while Jarmusch's tale has its morbid pleasures, its chances of achieving the same adored cult status as Shaun strike me as an undead kind of slim.
Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) police the quiet mid-American town of Centerville, where the height of crime appears to be the theft of Farmer Frank Miller's chickens by local recluse Hermit Bob. But stories of the Earth having been knocked off its axis due to fracking activity are all over the news and the sun is going down way too late. There are more serious consequences too when darkness does fall - something very nasty is crawling from the local graveyard and the good townspeople are about to be besieged by undead horror. Cliff and Ronnie, along with fellow officer Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), have a hellish day ahead, but perhaps they'll have some support from the town's enigmatic new funeral director - Tilda Swinton as the kitana sword-wielding Zelda Winston. (Spot the anagram?)
Anyone expecting traditional levels of zombie-related mayhem here might do well to check out the director's back catalogue. Jarmusch is known for talk-heavy, leisurely paced screenplays, that eschew action for character development. While The Dead Don't Die has moments of vivid flesh-eating gore and a climactic kill-count as high as most movies in the genre, its heart lies elsewhere - in lengthy scenes laced with deadpan humour (no pun intended) and satire that's even more in your face than that of Romero's classic trilogy. Here Jarmusch takes the 'zombies as the ultimate comsumers' idea from 1978's Dawn of the Dead a step further, with the entire zombie hoard representing the ravishment of the Earth by Middle American shoppers. Meanwhile Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) provides a wry and growly commentary on the whole sorry mess, as the one character who has opted out of the modern consumer malaise.
It's an approach that provides intermittent fun. Parts of this film are genuinely hilarious - the Murray and Driver double-act is consistently poker-faced and droll, Danny Glover strikes up an endearing partnership with comic-book store clerk Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Steve Buscemi produces a few real guffaws as the bigoted Farmer Frank. Overall, however, it's too concerned with being offbeat and odd to mesh effectively with the subject-matter. The lack of momentum becomes frustrating and not all the cast embrace Jarmusch's brand of weirdness with equal success. Also the screenplay's indulgence in self-referential humour and third-wall breaking (constant references to the movie's specially-commissioned theme song and its writer are only the start of it) amuse at first, before starting to irritate.
Don't get me wrong - I laughed more frequently and more heartily at this quirky indy take on the zombie apocalypse than at most mainstream comedies. It's just that the writer-director seems to be approaching the subject-matter as a diverson rather than anything more weighty. Even the satire is deliberately spread on thick, so you can't really take it seriously. The Dead Don't Die is worth your time, but ultimately when it comes to z-horror, Shaun's slacker Brit-comedy proved a much more natural fit.
Gut Reaction: Big laughs and awkwardness. A strange combination for a very strange film.
Memorable Moment: A famililar zombie face at the diner...
Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Jarmusch's love for Romero is clear and his zom-com has his moments. But it's not off-centre genre classic for which I'd hoped.
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