When Jim Jarmusch makes a zombie movie you know you’re in for something special. Well, “special” might not be quite the right word for it, but it’s definitely unique. Well… unique, as in it’s just like every other Jim Jarmusch movie, except… you know… with zombies.
The Earth shifts on its axis, causing the dead to rise from their graves. Small town sheriff Bill Murray and his deputy Adam Driver are more perplexed by the chain of events more than anything. Eventually, they have to contend with the ever-increasing zombie outbreak.
Jarmusch didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, but his deadpan handling of the material and idiosyncratic dialogue is enough to breathe new life into a rather (un)dead subgenre. Unlike his other foray into horror, the uneven vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, he seems to be embracing the conventions of the genre instead of resisting them, and the result is a damn good time.
It also helps that he assembled an amazing cast. I didn’t know I needed to see Iggy Pop as a coffee-drinking zombie. Or Tilda Swinton as a samurai mortician. Or RZA as a wisdom-spouting UPS driver. Or Steve Buscemi as a redneck MAGAt. There’s also Tom Waits as a grizzled mountain man, Chloe Sevigny as a deputy, Danny Glover as a world-weary local, indie horror mainstay Larry Fessenden as a motel owner, Rosie Perez as a newscaster, and Selena Gomez and Austin Butler as victims.
It’s Murray and Driver who really make it work. Their nonplussed reactions and nonchalant acceptance of the situation provides the film with some of its biggest laughs. (I also like how they casually let the audience know that they know they’re stuck in a movie.)
Sure, not all of it clicks. The stuff with the juvenile delinquents in a detention facility kind of falls flat and never really intersects with the main plot. The CGI is a little wonky in spots too. (Dust spews out of the zombies when they are killed rather than blood.) Fortunately, whenever Murray and Driver are front and center, The Dead Don’t Die really comes to life.
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