Review: ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ is like a zombie, slow and missing the plot

Jim Jarmusch's zombie film has a great cast, but that's not enough to save it

Bill Murray (left), Chloe Sevigny and Adam Driver in “The Dead Don’t Die.” Photo: Abbot Genser, Focus Features

There are lots of good things about “The Dead Don’t Die,” and you could put all of it in a pile and set it on fire, because none of it matters. It’s a dead movie walking. You could say it’s a zombie movie that is, itself, a zombie movie.

Jim Jarmusch is at the stage of his career when everyone wants to be in a Jim Jarmusch movie, and so they’re all in “The Dead Don’t Die,” such that the casting is a constant source of (mild) pleasure. So is the sense of humor. There are real laughs here, but not enough to compensate for a movie that is entirely without vitality. The pace is beyond slow. Time stands still, even as the zombies keep coming.

“The Dead Don’t Die” is more like a series of knowing gestures than an attempt to tell a story or make a point. There’s an obvious environmental message here, but one so obvious that it must be tongue-in-cheek. Fracking has thrown the Earth off its axis, causing a number of anomalies: Batteries don’t recharge and the sun never goes down, which is bad. And worse, much worse, the dead wake up and start clawing their way out of their graves.

This is a familiar idea within zombie movies, the notion that the undead are a sign of cultural weakness. Zombies aren’t just an unfortunate thing that sometimes happens, but an unfortunate thing that societies somehow deserve, usually due to acquisitiveness. In this movie, the living dead arrive with an affinity for their previous addictions, such as caffeine and white wine. But they’re willing to devour anything, because that’s what zombies do. They’re mindless, and they want stuff.

Bill Murray and Adam Driver play a pair of small-town policemen, and the interaction between them is the best thing in the movie. Their deadpan comic styles suit the movie’s tone. At one point, they come across disgustingly half-eaten bodies inside a diner, and everyone speculates that wild animals did it. But Driver isn’t buying it. “I’m thinking zombies,” he says, so matter-of-factly that the line is the movie’s best laugh.

Tilda Swinton plays a spooky mortician, who is handy with a sword; Steve Buscemi is a lot of fun in his few scenes as a nasty farmer; and Chloe Sevigny is appropriately whiny and terrified as the town’s other police officer. Others turn up — Carol Kane, Iggy Pop, Rosie Perez, Danny Glover, Selena Gomez, Tom Waits — and everyone does their job. But long before midway, it becomes clear that the people onscreen are having more fun than the audience.

There’s a laziness about “The Dead Don’t Die,” as if it were made in the expectation that the concept alone could carry it. There are in-jokes and references to other horror movies, as though the film were making fun of itself. But in the absence of something substantive at the movie’s core, these jokes and references don’t seem like amusing transgressions against the normal rules of storyteller. Rather, they’re like consolation prizes for the movie having nothing else to offer.

Indeed, it’s hard to figure out why this film was even made, beyond the fact that it could be made, that there was a loose idea and talented people willing to join in the fun. It’s neither serious nor funny enough, and it adds nothing to Jarmusch’s reputation. If anything, it might hurt it retroactively.

K“The Dead Don’t Die”: Zombie comedy. Starring Adam Driver and Bill Murray. Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Theaters and Showtimes  (R. 105 minutes.)

  • Mick LaSalle