2019 zombedy
Rating: 14/20
Plot: Inhabitants of Centerville, a nice place to live, deal with a zombie apocalypse.
Like those Marvel movies, this has individual character posters, but I'm having a difficult time finding one for Tom Waits' Hermit Bob character, dumbfounding considering he plays a significant role in this and gets a soliloquy that is sort of the gnarled heart of this film. Or maybe it's the intestines, disemboweled and squelchy. Tom Waits, whose first line in this film is "Up your hole with a wooden pole, Bob," should be featured on every movie poster, even for movies that he isn't in. So not getting his own character poster for this movie is a disappointment.
On the surface, this Jarmusch movie might also seem like a disappointment. Despite my boredom with the zombie genre and belief that there's really nothing left in that well, I was semi-excited about this because I'm a Jarmusch fan and liked the cast. The deadpan humor works throughout if that's your bag, and the film's structure--less a coherent plot than a series of vignettes where eccentric characters in this "nice place to live" can interact humorously--almost makes this like a pleasant cross between Night of the Living Dead and Coffee and Cigarettes. The story doesn't progress; it sort of shambles along like a zombie's movements. At times, it feels a little half-assed, but fans of Jarmusch's aesthetic will likely be able to ride its currents.
And it is fun! Tom Waits gets to play a fun character, kind of the same guy you imagine his gold-hungry character from the Coen Brothers' movie last year would eventually turn into if he lived to be 200 years old. Tilda Swinton's Buddhist Scottish mortician who can swing a mean samurai sword is a character that makes virtually no sense, right up until the moment she surprisingly skiddoos, but it's the funniest I think I've ever seen her. Bill Murray and Adam Driver have nice dispassionate rapport, both just kind of understanding the type of character who is supposed to inhabit a Jarmuschian world and fitting in as well as you'd think they would. Chloe Sevigny, Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi, Caleb Landry Jones, Larry Fessenden, and Iggy Pop also get their moments in this.
The satirical content is a little too on-the-nose, a very obvious indictment of Trump-era small-town Americana. The first clue is Steve Buscemi's red cap, the message of "Keep America White Again" which still makes me laugh. The zombies in this are attracted to their activities as living human beings and lurch along mumbling words like "coffee" or "Snickers" or "Snapple" or "tools" or "wi-fi," again something that feels a bit tired and obvious. The more I think about the variety of characters in this, however, the more I think the satire works. Chances are, you'll recognize yourself in one of these characters. You'll see your personal reaction to Trump's America and how the entire country has lost its fucking mind and how everything is "all jacked up." It's all topsy-turvy, and day is night, and night is day, and Adam Driver doesn't think it will end well because it probably can't end well. You can observe, you can panic, you can fight, you can check your devices, you can put on a cap. It's up to you, but you have to worry about a zombie ripping out your intestines and feasting on your innards.
I'm not sure what to make of some of this. There's some meta moments that weirded things up, and it's hard to figure out how one of the two trios of teenage characters fit into things. Some day, I'll revisit this, and it's fun enough and filled with enough interesting imagery (love how flashing police lights and smudged windows can show zombies) and tangents that it'll be an easy one to watch again. I'm still not sure how I feel about seeing special effects in a Jim Jarmusch movie, however.
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