The Dead Don’t Die – Nothing new, but nicely done


I know, I know... this is ANOTHER zombie movie.  Twenty years ago that might have been met with a collective gasp, but nowadays we’ve seen pretty much every type of zombie movie there is to make.  Even the once great ‘The Walking Dead’ is slowly slipping from public relevance.  So, is ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ worth a watch?  Well, first of all it’s a ‘zom-com.’ Again, that might have been different if ‘Shaun of the Dead’ hadn’t stolen the spotlight around fifteen years ago.  In short... ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ doesn’t offer a single thing that’s different to any other sub-genre of a typical film, but that doesn’t mean you should necessarily skip it.

I guess the main thing this film has going for it is its cast.  The ever-dry Bill Murray plays a small-town Sherriff who finds himself caught up in one of those typical zombie apocalypse settings.  He’s backed up with well-known actors like Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover and Steve Buscemi , so with a cast like that you know you’re going to get a few good performances.


It’s quite self-knowing and some of the humour does tend to be a little ‘meta’ in places, plus there are some simply random elements that you’ll never see coming (but I think that’s the point!).  The ‘random’ element is good when it comes to humour and surprises, but I felt that – due to the large cast list – many characters’ stories don’t really go anywhere and some seem to be originally set up to play some big, important part of the story, only for them to get killed off screen and that’s the end of them.


Perhaps the film’s budget went on paying so many recognisable actors to star in it, because if you’re expecting some sort of wall-to-wall gore fest then you won’t find it here.  Most of the gore is very obviously computer-generated and there isn’t really even much in the way of ‘comedy over-the-top’ violence like other films such as the afore-mentioned ‘Shaun of the Dead.’


‘The Dead Don’t Die’ does tend to suffer from all the typical zombie movie tropes, but the cast are good enough to pull it off so that if you’re in the mood for something funny (or should I say ‘dry?’) to go with your run-of-the-mill zombie movie then I’d definitely give this one a watch.  Bill Murray makes it, but credit to Tilda Swinton for her memorable role as a Scottish Samurai mortician and Adam Driver for a role with numerous ‘Star Wars’ references.


8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one