The Dead Don't Die [15]

Dir: Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch is an acquired taste, one I never discovered with the exception of Only Lovers Left Alive. Having liked that and being a big horror fan, I was quietly encouraged by Jarmusch returning to the horror genre and by the fact that many fans haven’t liked The Dead Don’t Die. On this occasion, the fans were right.

In the town of Centerville, the dead are coming back to life. Police Chief Cliff (Bill Murray), his officers Ronnie and Mindy (Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny) along with several townsfolk, including the scottish samurai (Tilda Swinton) who has just taken over the funeral home, must fight back.

It takes a while for The Dead Don’t Die to become a zombie movie. Before it does, Jarmusch trades in comedy so deadpan that it feels inert. It might be interesting that the townspeople all speak in the same near monotone and that everything feels so low energy if that played in to the horror aspects of the film, but if Jarmusch is trying to do this it simply doesn’t come across. The overwhelming feeling is one of awkwardness. Things are static, with characters often standing in place and seeming to deliver lines in the manner of a first table read. This does not help even the better jokes play, and makes every scene feel as if it lasts twice as long as it actually does. Again, if this felt intentional, like a satirical take on the monotony of life in a town as small and, one assumes, quiet as Centerville, it might be slightly more amusing. That’s a reading you could impose, but for me it’s not something Jarmusch ever actually indicates. This also makes it difficult to say anything about the performances, because they all occupy this same monotonous space and are so obviously directed that even the film’s best actors come off as stiff.

Beyond this, The Dead Don’t Die is simply poorly crafted. Multiple plotlines and characters go absolutely nowhere and disappear rather than ending. Selena Gomez appear as one of a group driving through Centerville on a road trip. They decide to stay the night, but have precisely no effect on the story and nothing to mark them out as characters. Endings seem to be a major issue for Jarmusch, the way he wraps up Swinton’s story screams desperation, grabbing an idea from thin air whether it makes any sense or not. A group of teens from the juvenile detention centre in town are particularly redundant, they also have nothing to do with the overarching story and the screenplay doesn’t even attempt to pull an idea out of thin air for them, instead they just run off screen, never to be seen again. Another in the grab bag of ideas that go nowhere involves Ronnie’s recurring line “This is going to end badly”, the reveal of how he knows this has some potential, but again, Jarmusch throws the idea out and never does anything with it, except to have one brief exchange in which Murray and Driver wink so hard at the audience that you worry they’ll burst a blood vessel.

Horror cinema is often dismissed by people who don’t see a lot of it. Yes, there are horror movies that just do what they say on the tin, but the genre as a whole is seldom simply about vampires or masked killers, or zombies. Horror is rich in metaphor and commentary, it looks at the world through a skewed lens and uses the terror of the unknown to pass comment on the world. This is another of the many areas in which The Dead Don’t Die is a dismal failure. If Jarmusch has a point to make here it’s one that is painfully out of date. George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead posited that consumerism was turning us into zombies as far back as 1978, all Jarmusch ever does here is reiterate that with slightly updated references, his zombies moaning “WiFi”, “Coffee” or “Fashion”. As dated as his point is, Jarmusch also uses it extremely poorly. I’ve always found the metaphor at the heart of Dawn of the Dead a bit laboured, but at least Romero commits to the idea, Jarmusch’s zombies simply mutter the words he’s given them, they don’t lead to any larger point or clever setup. This same problem persists with how the zombie apocalypse has come about here, there’s a reference to fracking, but again, it doesn’t play in to either the satire (if satire is even being attempted) or the horror, it’s just a buzzword. 

The Dead Don’t Die is a graveyard of ideas. Time and again, Jarmusch introduces a character or a notion only to let it sit there and rot. The comatose delivery he’s shackled his cast to kills the comedy deader than the film’s completely uninteresting zombies. Watching this film I simply can’t tell why Jarmusch, or anyone else for that matter, wanted to make it and that doesn’t translate into something I’d recommend you spend any time watching.

★

24FPS @ LFF 2017: Princess Cyd

Dir: Stephen Cone

Princess Cyd is writer/director Stephen Cone's eighth feature in as many years, but you'd be forgiven for not knowing that, because the two of his films that have come out in the UK have had only low key streaming releases, Black Box through Amazon and Henry Gamble's Birthday Party through Netflix. I was shown the latter earlier this year and instantly marked Cone as a director to watch for his witty dialogue, ability as an actor's director and knack for creating believable characters and relationships. If there's any justice, Princess Cyd will serve as Cone's breakout moment.

The minimal story finds 16 year old Cyd (Jessie Pinnick) going to stay in Chicago for a couple of weeks with her aunt Miranda (Rebecca Spence), a well known writer. While she's there, Cyd meets Katie (Malic White) and begins a casual relationship. From a wary start, we see Cyd and Miranda's relationship grow and both of them grow a bit through it.

Much of Princess Cyd unfolds through conversation. This is perhaps Cone's greatest strength as a writer; the character's voices are distinct as are the ways that each character relates to all the others and it's the differences in these relationships and therefore in the flow of conversation that makes it so engaging. We see this best in the evolution of how Cyd and Miranda talk. Initially Cyd is a bit reticent saying, almost as the first thing she tells her author aunt, that she doesn't read. This gives way to lighter moments as they begin to relate more, and later to a tense and frank conversation after a get together at Miranda's house, when Cyd suggests that if her Aunt had sex rather than cake she might be happier. This scene is some of Cone's best writing of the whole film, with an angry Miranda visibly trying to get her point across without saying something she might regret, but which is clearly what she'd like to say if Cyd were a few years older. This is also the moment when Rebecca Spence's performance is at its best. There has been a sense throughout of her feeling out how to relate to her niece and, alongside the other notes in this scene, she gives Miranda a barely disguised sense of disappointment that perhaps she hasn't yet worked it out as well or as completely as she thought.

The evolution of Cyd and Miranda's relationship and the ways they rub off on each other is one of the film's strongest threads. Through Miranda (and perhaps through wanting to impress Katie, who does read), Cyd finds a greater connection to her aunt's work, while Miranda is somewhat lightened by Cyd, doing things she hasn't done and thinking about things she hasn't considered for some time. This is woven through the relationship between Miranda and Anthony, Cyd sees an energy between them and encourages it to both of them, but Cone smartly refuses to make it that simple or to put a bow on it by the end of the film. It's an intelligently written story that emphasises the differences in how people think and their priorities at 16 and at 40.

The film is set in the summer, and this comes through in the visuals, which show a suburban Chicago far from the crime ridden image we're often given of it in the news. This is probably to do with the circles Cyd finds herself in, but it also suggests that sense of her enjoying a new place and, in Katie, new people. Scenes of Cyd lying out in Miranda's garden to sunbathe or the time she spends with Katie have that feel of the long days of summer that seem to stretch out in front of us in our school holidays. This is very much the feel of the scenes leading up to and at Miranda's party. Cyd borrows an outfit – a tuxedo – from Katie to attend, and you get the sense of her finding a new comfort in her skin and with her aunt and her friends. One very nice moment has Cyd asking a lesbian couple about the fact that they both used to be married to men, and ends up in her saying to them “I like... everything”, something you get the sense she's vocalising, perhaps even to herself, for the first time in that moment.

There are, among the sweet moments of coming of age, moments of darkness; that tense moment with Miranda, a call from Katie in a moment of crisis and the always present undertone of the family tragedy that Cyd survived when she was six, accentuated by the fact that she's staying in her late mother's old bedroom. Jessie Pinnick is outstanding throughout as Cyd, there's little sense that she's acting, except perhaps early in the party scene, before she settles in with the new people around her. The chemistry between Pinnick and Malic White as Katie also feels entirely unforced, we buy them as fast friends and the evolution of their relationship. There is a sense, as Cyd's stay is just two weeks, of the whole film as a series of stolen moments, that's never more true than in her relationship with Katie, particularly an early scene when a film crew mistakes Katie for a boy and asks her and Cyd to slow dance in the background of their shot. 

Like many of the best coming of age films, Princess Cyd is ultimately an ellipsis. We don't know where Cyd and Katie will end up, if Cyd will go back to Chicago for college or, beyond a closer relationship with her aunt, the lasting impact of these two weeks. Growing up is a process, and Princess Cyd is about a brief moment in it, one it captures beautifully.
★★★★★