Jim Jarmusch has been on a streak lately. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) was one of the best films in the 66-year-old writer/director’s astonishingly rich oeuvre. Three years later, Paterson was just as good. And after that, he headed into documentary territory, sharply profiling Iggy Pop and the Stooges for Gimme Danger.
Iggy is back in Jarmusch’s latest, The Dead Don’t Die, as is Paterson star Adam Driver—but aside from that, Jarmusch’s zombie comedy comes hard out of left field. It’s goofy, gory, and great, and it’s exactly the kind of rambling, lighthearted movie that should never be discussed using obnoxious phrases like “astonishingly rich oeuvre.”
I loved The Dead Don’t Die, despite the wafts of disapproval that—at least at the old-man-filled critics’ screening I attended—threatened to stink up the whole theater. Will you love The Dead Don’t Die? Well, that depends—on if you’re expecting another srs bsns drama like Only Lovers Left Alive, on if you share Jarmusch’s deadpan sense of humor, on if you like the gaggle of art-house stars who’ve come together to screw around: Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Chloë Sevigny. Selena Gomez shows up, too, as does Danny Glover.
Through this whole thing, great actors lurch in and out of frame, each hilariously straight-faced as (1) zombies tear open the edible townsfolk of Centerville, and (2) Jarmusch cracks joke after joke. This is a movie where Driver’s character carries a Star Destroyer keychain, and where Sturgill Simpson’s theme song, “The Dead Don’t Die,” plays over the opening credits—and then, minutes later, over a car stereo. “Why does it sound so familiar?” Murray wonders. “Because it’s the theme song,” says Driver.
For some, the quick, low-stakes joys of The Dead Don’t Die—like RZA, popping up in a brown uniform as a delivery driver for “WU-PS,”or Buscemi, popping up as a gun nut in a “Keep America White Again” hat—won’t be enough. And it’s true that The Dead Don’t Die, aside from some last-minute, half-assed philosophizing from Waits, doesn’t really say anything, or hell, even bring anything new to a genre that’s been played out for a decade.
But The Dead Don’t Die is what it is: an excuse for Jarmusch to round up his friends and have fun. Look, here’s Jarmusch’s friend Iggy Pop, gnawing on a bloody intestine! Look, here’s Jarmusch’s friend Tilda Swinton, and she has a samurai sword and is going all John Wick on some zombies! With friends like these, who needs a plot? 
