Over Your Dead Body

Grade: B-

I spent most of Over Your Dead Body disliking the two main characters, and then by the end, I was rooting for them – individually and together. Neither one is a saint. They both have their flaws, and they spend the majority of the movie trading the kind of insults a clever screenwriter would be proud they came up with. The jokes arise too often, considering the situations they find themselves in, but I was a captive audience, almost never checking my watch. The actors are having fun, the effects crew most certainly is, and I awaited each intriguing twist and turn.

A fellow critic noted he was disturbed and put off by one scene in particular. That it’s not obvious which one he’s talking about is a testament to the movie’s madcap wackiness. When it comes to gore, Over Your Dead Body is at the top of the bloody heap this year, surpassing a high bar set by Faces of Death, Forbidden Fruits, They Will Kill You, and Ready or Not 2. The latter title’s star, Samara Weaving, is one of the leads of Over Your Dead Body – put through the wringer again.

She plays Lisa, who is on her way to a lake house for a weekend with her husband Dan (Jason Segel). Leading up to the trip, Dan has been ostentatious in the way he loudly announces to whoever is within earshot that Lisa will be going on a hike by herself while they’re away – and that it’s so out of the way, and he’s worried about her, and something bad better not happen. This is because he’s planning on murdering her. While they are up there, she gets wise to it, chloroforms him, ties him to a chair, and tells him she knows.

It gets worse from there, when two runaway convicts and the corrections officer who helped them escape turn up. This isn’t as much of a spoiler as it may sound; the way the three of them drop into the scene provided me with my biggest laugh. Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine (Eddington, Love Lies Bleeding), and Juliette Lewis bring an energy and menace to the proceedings. Now Dan and Lisa have even more to worry about, as if what they were dealing with before wasn’t enough.

A few of these narrative concepts aren’t new. The romantic getaway that becomes much more than bargained for was explored within the past year in Keeper, Bone Lake, and Oh, Hi! Dan and Lisa’s cerebral, thesaurus-enhanced bickering will remind viewers of The Roses. The actors in Over Your Dead Body make it work. Weaving’s character is an actress. This is used as an opportunity to show her talking in a different accent as we see her practicing for an audition. She sounded like a different person. She’s a virtuoso with dialects – and indeed, Weaving has an upcoming role as a flirty southern belle in a movie out later this year. Over Your Dead Body rewards you for paying attention. Details introduced early, that you might not think are significant, come into play later. Almost every character does, too. There was one who I thought for sure we’d see again, somehow, but I guess the 5-person writing team couldn’t fit them in.

The movie’s beginning is creative. It’s a fake commercial. Audiences may think the film hasn’t started yet, and this is just another pre-show ad. It ends in a similar way. The characters are too clever, verbally, and have an unrealistic amount of stamina after many injuries. I think the script team and crew put themselves through a self-challenge, to see how gross and graphic they can make everything. However, Over Your Dead Body is an enjoyable, absorbing enough ride. It could have been one of those Tarantino copycat wannabe films that came out in the second half of the 90s. The actors must have had a blast. You can tell, through all their blood, sweat, tears, vomit, and pee.

Grade: B-