The Dead Don't Die

It's mildly amusing, mostly thanks to Swinton's swanning and the dry-as-bone exchanges between Murray and Driver.

The angriest movie I've seen all year. This is Jim Jarmusch putting a very strong environmentalist stance in the middle of a zombie movie.

The zombie genre is now close to exhaustion -- though this is not a problem for Jarmusch who likes his premises threadbare, all the better to distil them into absurdist ritual.

In-jokes abound and, though the material is slight, parts of the film are pretty funny. But it's a minor Jarmusch, with a running time too protracted for this type of thing.

Jim Jarmusch's movies are always laconic, but this one felt less like a bunch of old friends hanging out and more like old friends dutifully showing up to do one of them a half-hearted favor.

This is a testing experience even for people who loved the deadly ennui of Only Lovers Left Alive, Jarmusch's take on the vampire movie and in some ways a sister picture to this one.

Driver constantly tells the other characters that “This is going to end badly”... and sadly Driver is correct because The Dead Don’t Die shuffles towards a narratively daring but ultimately unsatisfactory ending.

There are several inside jokes and some pasted on commentary about us being the zombies clutching to our materialism and technology. But it has no bite whatsoever. So we’re left with the cast who are enough to save the film but just barely.

Jim Jarmusch is a genuinely original filmmaker and his experimentation with genre filmmaking adds fresh ideas to expected ones, and gives the film lover moments of pure joy.

Part genre experiment, part Jarmusch's angry statement about the world today, The Dead Dont Die uses the broad strokes of comedy and zombie horror to make sociopolitical observations.