Review | Cannes 2019: The Dead Don’t Die film review – Jim Jarmusch has a blast with all-star zombie comedy
- The undead have never looked as cool as this. Jarmusch’s zombies zero in on things they were addicted to when alive: white wine, Snapple ... and Wi-fi
- Selena Gomez, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, and Chloe Sevigny star in this cops vs corpses story that’s full of in-jokes and Jarmusch references
4/5 stars
“This isn’t going to end well,” mutters Adam Driver’s small-town police officer in Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, the opening film of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
You have to wonder if Driver’s character has spent time watching previous curtain-raisers at the world’s most prestigious film festival. Most of them are rather forgettable. But Jarmusch’s film, lightweight though it is, is a smartly tooled tribute to both the horror genre and the director’s own body of work.
Featuring a number of Jarmusch regulars – from Bill Murray to Tom Waits and Tilda Swinton – this is the writer-director at his most playful. Much like his 2013 vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive, it feels like Jarmusch has observed from afar the spate of flesh-eater movies that have populated cinemas these past years, then added his own wry spin on the genre.
The result will please both horror buffs (especially those who dug Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead) and Jarmusch followers.
Set in an American nowhere town, Centerville – “a real nice place”, as the sign says – the main characters are a trio of law enforcers: Driver’s Ronnie Peterson (surely a nod to the actor’s turn as the poet-bus driver in Jarmusch’s Paterson ); Chloë Sevigny’s fragile Mindy Morrison; and Bill Murray’s Clifford Robertson, their de facto leader.