What is it with Bill Murray and zombies? As one of the living dead in Zombieland, his "Do you have any regrets? Garfield, maybe." moment was a runaway highlight of the film, so it was only a matter of time before he returned to the world of the lurching dead. It came a few years later, this time under the direction of indie darling Jim Jarmusch for The Dead Don't Die (2019), which Netflix has just added.
Now, however, he's most definitely alive, as stoney-faced Chief Cliff Robertson, charged with looking after the residents of the sleepy town of Centerville. While he and his deputy, Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver), are stopping for coffee and doughnuts at the town’s diner, there’s full-scale carnage taking place in the moonlit cemetery. Flesh-eating zombies are at large and, as the ravenous swarm descends on the once-peaceful town, all the humans realize they’re at risk of being an endangered species. Led by their police officers, they band together to defend their homes, but will the dead actually die?
Zombie movies aren't known for their sense of humor. The apocalypse imagined by Edgar Wright in Shaun Of The Dead is perhaps the closest they get to a riotous comedy, but with its ironic tone, sense of the ridiculous and a good helping of laugh-out-loud moments, The Dead Don’t Die isn't far behind. As a horror pastiche, it won't give you white knuckles or jump scares. That's not the point for Jarmusch, who is more interested in gently poking fun at the genre and its conventions, up-ending them all and doing it with affection and a wry smile.
Murray's deadpan style of humor is the perfect match for the director’s vision, while Driver displays an unexpected knack for sardonic humor. And he shamelessly sends up his own physical attributes: the sight of him squeezing his long, angular frame in and out of a tiny two-seater car is one of the film’s most joyous visual gags.
The classy cast also includes Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, a rising young actor by the name of Austin Butler and Tilda Swinton, as a formidable Scottish mortician who’s never more at home than when wielding a samurai sword. She and Driver are totally in on the joke.
There’s a broad vein of social comedy running through the film as well. It’s no remake of George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead with its attack on consumerism: here the living dead stagger around in search of cheap chardonnay, coffee and wi-fi, even managing to utter the magic words. Their rampage across the Fargo-esque town and the sense that the cast relish fighting them off could easily earn The Dead Don’t Die a spot on the Netflix charts in the run-up to Christmas. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a gruesome giggle before the festivities set in?
The Dead Don’t Die has been added on Netflix in the US and UK on Monday, December 16.
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