The problem with Movie Night is, I'm asked to choose something from the "new selections" on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and MAX, with no research, just a cover blurb. Then, if it turns out to be awful, I get blamed: "You picked this!"
Last night I selected The Dead Don't Die on Hulu, because it starred Bill Murry and it was about zombies in a small town. I was wondering if anything new could be said about zombies after so many years of being blasted by Zombie Apocalypses.
No. Other than a few absurdist touches, like characters being aware that they're in a movie and an alien spaceship that appears out of nowhere, picks up Tilda Swinton, and vanishes, it's the standard. Due to..um...fracking?,,, day and night get mixed up, cell phones don't work, and the dead re-animate.
They crawl out of their graves, fully corporeal, even though some have been dead for centuries -- and eat the living in a small Pennsylvania town. Maybe everywhere in the world. The only suspense is wondering who will get eaten next.
This movie needs an editor. Cop #1 enters the diner to look at the two zombie-eaten waitresses. We see one, then the other, with their innards turned into spaghetti. Cop #2 enters to look. We see one, then the other again. Cop #3 enters to look. We see one, then the other a third time!
But on the bright side, there is no hetero-romance, and we see many gay subtexts. Probably unintentional.
The main zombies and zombie-dinners are:
1.-3. Three big city hipsters:Austin Butler, top photo; Luka Sabbat; and Selena Gomez. They stop for gas and for some reason decide to stay overnight in the town's decrepit hotel instead of continuing on to Pittsburgh. Selena flirts with every guy in sight, even when she doesn't want to get something from him, but there's no indication that she's dating either of her companions.
4-7. Police officers Bill Murray and Adam Driver, second photo. Adam asks the female police officer at the station for a date, and Bill had an affair with town drunk Carol Kane. But the two end up together, with a sort of buddy-bonding going on before they are killed.
8-9. Neither racist farmer Steve Buscemi nor cat-loving hotel manager Larry Fessenden, left, have wives at home, mention dead wives, or flirt with the gals at the diner.
10-12. Caleb Landry Jones, who played a gay guy in Stonewall, runs the gas station/horror movie memorabilia shop, seems to have a crush on delivery driver RZA. He almost asks him for a date, but loses his nerve. Later he is trapped in a hardware store with Danny Glover, and almost grabs his hand before they are eaten.
Bonus: Caleb Landry's butt
13-14. Iggy Pop, who was famous a long time ago, is a hippie zombie who, along with a girlfriend, invades the diner, kills the two waitresses, and drinks coffee.
15. Sid O'Connell, a guard at the juvenile detention center.
And the survivors:
1-3. Jahi Winston, an inmate at the town's juvenile detention center, keeps hanging out with two girls. The guards punish him for it and ask if he wants to be a girl. We can conclude that he's gay, hanging out with a lesbian couple. The trio actually survives, or at least we don't see them being eaten.
3. Tom Waits is a grizzled old hermit who watches the events through binoculars, and ends the movie with an annoyingly self-rightous diatribe about how it's our own fault for...um...having stuff like tv sets and cell phones?
I thought the movie was a lengthy commercial for Sturgill Simpson's song "The Dead Don't Die." It plays on the radio like twelve times, and everyone stops their zombie-fleeing to comment "This is a great song!" They latch onto CDS as if they are the Holy Grail, even stealing them from zombies. But it turns out that Simpson wrote this song for the movie, and only released it as a single, then an album, when fans started yelling for it.
So what's the point of everyone lapsing into orgiastic ecstasy over it?
My Grade: C
Bonus: What pops up when you search on "Sid O'Connell" and "nude." I think it's Josh O'Connor.
See also: Stonewall, a movie about the riots that started the Gay Rights Movement
The Santa Clarita Diet: Witty dialogue, zombies, and Skyler Gisondo
I remember there was a lot of excitement for this movie before it released but then it came out and bombed - Austin Buttler has become a hot star after getting an Oscar nomination for playing Elvis - he is starring in a new called " The Bikeriders " with Tom Hardy about motorcycle gang - the trailers hints at plenty of homoerotic subtext
ReplyDeleteIt had a lot of recognizable faces, mixing 1970s sitcom stars with former Nickelodeon/Disney Channel kids, as if trying to appeal to all ages. I haven't seen Austin in anything since his "Hannah Montana" days, but I'll look out for "The Bikenders"
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