What’s with Bill Murray and zombies!? Netflix adds its “deadly funny” comedy

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What about Bill Murray and zombies? As one of the living dead in Zombielandbe “Do you have anything to regret?” Garfield, maybe.” This moment was an absolute 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 The dead don’t die (2019), which Netflix just added.

Now, however, he’s definitely alive, as the stone-faced Chief Cliff Robertson, tasked with looking after the residents of the sleepy town of Centerville. While he and his deputy, Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver), drink coffee and donuts in the town diner, there is a real bloodbath in the moonlit cemetery. Flesh-eating zombies are on the loose and as the ravenous swarm descends on the once peaceful city, everyone realizes that they are at risk of becoming 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 Shaun of the Dead is perhaps the closest thing to a riotous comedy, but with its ironic tone, sense of the ridiculous and a good portion of laugh-out-loud moments, The dead don’t die is not far behind. Since it’s a horror pastiche, it won’t give you white knuckles or jump scares. That’s not what Jarmusch is about, who is more interested in gently poking fun at the genre and its conventions, turning them all on their heads and doing so with affection and a wry smile.

Murray’s dry humor fits the director’s vision perfectly, while Driver displays an unexpected talent for sardonic humor. And he shamelessly shows off 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 top-notch cast also includes Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, an up-and-coming young actor named Austin Butler, and Tilda Swinton as a formidable Scottish undertaker who is never more at ease than when wielding a samurai sword. She and Driver are completely in on the joke.

There is also a broad vein of social comedy running through the film. It’s not a George A. Romero remake Dawn of the Dead with its attack on consumerism: Here the living dead stagger around in search of cheap Chardonnay, coffee and WiFi and even manage to say the magic words. Her Fargo-style rampage through the city and the sense that the cast is having fun fending them off could easily be earned The dead don’t die a place in the Netflix charts in the run-up to Christmas. Because who doesn’t love a spooky giggle before the festivities begin?

The dead don’t die was added to Netflix in the US and UK on Monday, December 16th.