The Dead Don’t Die uses the zombie as a blueprint for its form and presentation. It moves slow and sluggish and buries its brains in a lot of lowbrow stupidity (which is mostly effective). It knows how “hip” the zombie has become, and in it’s own “hip” kinda way it tries to put the tombstone on the genre. To a large degree, Jarmusch’s take on zombies is the perfect foil for zombie films, which are so over saturated nowadays that they’ve pretty much lost their allure entirely. He bogs down the viewer with frivolous expositional minutiae, delaying or outright rejecting typical thrills and kills along the way as a lighthearted middle finger to the zombie fans who seem to want more and more of the same recycled crap.

Jarmusch gives them what they want: a recycled zombie films that seeks to regurgitate the least interesting aspects of a zombie film in its own interesting and entertaining kinda way. Whether or not the film and its intent is successful will vary from person to person, but based off the film’s apparent goal, it finds a large amount of success within its premise. The cast finds really great ways of drawing laughs out of the material with body language and delivery. Murray and Driver in particular share a wonderfully wry chemistry that is a blast to sit with. As with most comedies, everything comes down to timing, and the cast finds the right meter to delivery the deadpan and slyly hip zingers, which is further tightened by Affonso Gonçalves’ editing.