‘The Dead Don’t Die’ turns a zombie invasion into a painfully dull affair

Posted on June 21, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

I’ve often said that expectations can be a bad thing when it comes to watching movies. If you go in expecting a certain type of movie and you get something different, it can come as quite a disappointment.

Still, sometimes expectations can help. Over the years, when writing my previews for new movies, I try to list the director and screenwriter, because if you’ve seen their previous works, it will give you an idea of what you might expect. This doesn’t always work and can fall into my previous warning about expecting one thing and getting another, but often serves as a good guide.

Take, for instance, the new zombie comedy “The Dead Don’t Die.” It is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, known for his indie films, the most recent being “Paterson,” a movie about an ordinary week in the life of a poet. Most people saw the trailer and the wonderful ensemble cast and figured this was going to be an action comedy in the vein of “Zombieland.”

But, having seen “Paterson,” I knew there was also a decent chance “The Dead Won’t Die” was going to be an “indy-film” zombie movie. That also interested me, because as someone who rarely gravitates toward horror, I’m more often a fan of zombie movies that do something different, whether it’s action comedy (“Zombieland”), romantic comedy (“Warm Bodies”) or animation (“ParaNorman”).

“The Dead Don’t Die” could have been that slow-paced, dry-witted indie-film — which would have still turned off most of its audience sitting down expecting lots of zombie action — and delivered a quirky, almost ironic take on the genre. Unfortunately, the deliberately snail-paced story never really amounts to anything, aside from a not-terribly-funny meta joke and a voice-over monologue about the state of modern society. Adding to the problems is the fact that the comedy more often than not falls flat despite the phenomenal cast speaking the lines.

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