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32 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019

PLANET

TERROR

IN JIM JARMUSCH’S WISTFULLY COMIC

THE DEAD DON’T DIE, ZOMBIES RISE UP

AS OUR WORLD WINDS DOWN

BY AMY TAUBIN

Closer Look:The Dead Don’t Dieis in theaters now.

the premise of jim jarmusch’s zombie

movieThe Dead Don’t Die is that fracking

at the polar ice caps has destabilized the

Earth’s magnetic field so that time is out of

joint and bad things happen—such as the

dead arising from their graves. The setting

is Centerville, a very small town in upstate

New York with a three-person police force

(Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloë

Sevigny); a bunch of oddball residents

(Tom Waits, Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi,

Larry Fessenden, RZA, Caleb Landry Jones,

and Eszter Balint among them); some visi-

tors, including hipsters played by Selena

Gomez, Luka Sabbat, and Austin Butler; a

Scottish samurai swordswoman moonlight-

ing as the town’s mortician (Tilda Swinton);

and a few very hungry zombies (Iggy Pop,

Sara Driver, Carol Kane), who get the party

started. One of the pleasures of the film

(which opened Cannes this year) is the cast,

but above all, it is Jarmusch’s vision of an

apocalypse we have collectively brought

upon ourselves—nice people though we

may be—that makes the film wryly amusing

until it becomes overwhelmingly tragic.