Polar fracking has thrown the Earth off its axis \u2014 a pretty big deal that most of the people of Centreville are barely taking in. In this small, peaceful town of 738 inhabitants, everyone sticks to their easy routine. Political differences and environmental disasters alike are easily set aside, not necessarily out of ignorance, but rather because big events and ideas seem to have little impact on the everyday lives of all involved. That is, until zombies start popping out of the ground.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Jarmusch\u2019s vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive<\/em> <\/strong>showed his keen interest in the macabre. In 2016, the director demonstrated a real eye for the poetry and serenity of small-town America in Paterson<\/em><\/strong>. In its earlier moments, The Dead Don\u2019t Die<\/strong><\/em> juxtaposes these two somewhat contrary passions to great comic, absurd, and somewhat disturbing effect. When zombie Iggy Pop and zombie Sara Driver attack two women closing the local diner for the night, we see them tear through their flesh in realistic and gruesome detail. \u201cWhat did you expect?\u201d, the film\u2019s still compositions and slow editing style seem to tell us, and none of us can deny that zombie flesh eating is a nasty business. But whether that observation is amusing or original enough to sustain an entire scene will depend on the patience of the viewer \u2014 and, it soon turns out, on how much they care about the metatextual significance of Mr. Pop and Jarmusch\u2019s other famous friends.<\/p>\n The Dead Don\u2019t Die<\/em><\/strong> self-consciously interrupts its already tough going flow several times with references to Donald Trump, to its cast\u2019s status in popular culture, and \u2014 most awkwardly of all \u2014 to its own nature as a scripted film. These latter winks at the audience could almost work if they weren\u2019t so few and far between; as such, the gimmick comes across as a rather lazy afterthought.<\/p>\n Adam Driver\u2019s predictably scintillating performance as a policeman with an oddly calm reaction to these earth-shattering events (\u201cI\u2019m just dealing with it in my own way\u201d) mercifully raises the pulse of his many scenes with Bill Murray, whose tired act of po-faced resignation quickly becomes repetitive and tiresome.<\/p>\n With the deaths of many of the characters graphic yet, as is the film\u2019s philosophy, never surprising, the ongoing slaughter of the cast feels oddly lethargic. Still, the film remains comparatively pleasant until an unnecessary final act in which our infrequent narrator Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) waxes lyrical about the damnation of the human race: perhaps our social-media obsessed capitalist selves have been zombies all along, he says. It isn\u2019t the message itself that is the problem here \u2014 it has been a staple of zombie films at least since Dawn Of The<\/strong> Dead<\/strong><\/em> by George Romero, who too gets name-checked in the film. Rather, it is the sense of superiority of the statement that grates: Hermit Bob delivers his contemptuous perspective on human civilisation from the safety of his roadside bush, and Jarmusch from behind his dark glasses. Supposedly speaking for all of us, they both lose us there, and it hurts to see the quietness and calm that made Paterson <\/em><\/strong>so pleasing turn into a sour disdain for people who use smartphones.<\/p>\n The Dead Don’t Die was seen and reviewed at Cannes Film Festival 2019.<\/strong>
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