Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and his deputy, Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) are out in the woods confronting Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) about whether he has been poaching the racist farmer, Farmer Miller (Steve Buscemi)'s chickens. After doing that they leave, remarking that it is surprisingly still light outside despite the time. The cops are later called to a crime scene where it appears that the victims were attacked by wild animals. However, they soon find that some graves in the cemetery appear to be open and that the dead have arisen from them and are back for brains... and coffee. There is also that new undertaker in town, Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton) who speaks with a Scottish accent and seems fond of Samurai swords... Could this all be related to the Polar Fracking in the news? Is the world doomed?
In the hands of another director this film could have been pretty fun. With cameos and characters portrayed by Iggy Pop, Danny Glover, Carol Kane & Selena Gomez amongst others, not to mention having top billing with Bill Murray, this promised to be a nice new comedy horror to add to the genre. Unfortunately, Jarmusch's bleak, middle-American style and purposefully stilted scripting robs the film of a lot of charm rather than adding to it.
The styling and handling also seems to overpower the talented cast, whose performances seem to be constrained within the film's parameters and are unable to give it their all. Murray is the master of deadpan, but the forced style of the script undermined his performance a little. I did, however, enjoy the scene with him lying to comfort officer Mindy (Chloë Sevigny); it was decidedly the most human moment between any of the characters and showed a glimpse of what could have been.
The film attempts to have some political messaging but is handled in such an overtly clumsy way it's hard to tell what the stance is and there's some strange fourth wall breaking that doesn't seem to fit into the context of the plot and felt kind of tacked on.
Some of the jokes land, but there are some less witty moments that didn't seem to work and whole scenes of build up that go nowhere or wind up with off-screen deaths which make it all for nought. While this may be a purposeful joke intended to poke fun at the horror genre at large, it didn't read that way during viewing.
There are some fun gory moments, and a lot of Easter eggs (again some more subtle than others) and tropey in-jokes.
Overall I wasn't bored, but the film style didn't lend well to the plot and overall I was a little disappointed.
[Image: Focus Features, et al]
Hani
