The Dead Don't Die's meta punchline

In Jim Jarmusch's new zombie flick, Adam Driver, Bill Murray, and Selena Gomez play themselves

Bill Murray and Adam Driver.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Focus Features, str33tcat/iStock)

What exactly are you supposed to do with zombies in a movie in 2019? We've already covered zombies as "stand-ins for political or economic turmoil," zombies as metaphors for "the emptiness of contemporary culture," and zombies that "represent us, living a life of endless, mindless consumption of media and products." If you want to find a trope that has been completely rung out, you could do worse than the living dead.

The Dead Don't Die, out Friday, lands somewhere between using its zombies as consumer culture critique and climate change metaphor — nothing radically new as far as the genre is concerned. But it isn't the zombies that make this zombie movie worth watching. Rather, it is the ensemble cast, who essentially play exaggerated versions of themselves to blur the lines between what is fictional and what feels real.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.