PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   Dan (Jason Segel) is exhibiting unusually strong conviction regarding his weekend plans with his wife, Lisa (Samara Weaving). He loudly informs his colleagues that they will be spending the weekend at their secluded cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, she insists on embarking on a solo mountain hike, despite impending snow and her complete lack of hiking experience.

It turns out, Dan has reached his breaking point. A former TV commercial director with a single hit movie from years past, he has endured an unhappy marriage for years and has resolved to take the most extreme measure possible: murdering his wife to collect her life insurance. His scheme appears flawless… until she incapacitates him with a taser just as he’s about to execute it.

Because Lisa, too, has had enough. A struggling actress who sacrificed her full-time job to support her husband, burdened by debt, Lisa is at her wit’s end. She has been conspicuously discussing with her friend her husband’s insistence on a hunting trip during their cabin getaway this weekend. She dislikes hunting and has no desire to handle a rifle. What if she were to stumble, and the rifle were to accidentally discharge?

However, this is merely the beginning of the intensely violent dark comedy Over Your Dead Body, Jorma Taccone’s reimagining of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian film, The Trip. Similar to The Trip, Over Your Dead Body starts with the premise of a married couple attempting to kill each other, before events take an unforeseen turn when three escaped criminals (in Over Your Dead Body‘s case, Timothy Olyphant and Keith Jardine’s two criminals, plus Juliette Lewis’ prison guard who aided their escape) take them hostage. Yet, unlike The Trip, a brutal action-horror film with a cruel edge, Over Your Dead Body struggles to reconcile Taccone’s more lighthearted comedic style with the story’s dark, brutal developments. The outcome is a movie with an inconsistent and mismatched tone that never quite justifies its violence.

It’s evident that Taccone, widely recognized as a member of The Lonely Island comedy group and director of the excellent music satire Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, is more at ease with the film’s more energetic first half. This section cleverly uses a flashback device to fill in backstory whenever a new twist emerges. It’s an ingenious technique from screenwriters Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney: each new revelation — Lisa’s murderous intent, the arrival of the three criminals — becomes a sharp punchline, imbuing the film with a meta-humor that Taccone clearly excels at. But when Olyphant, Jardine, and Lewis enter the scene, the narrative shifts to a shockingly grim and disappointingly straightforward direction.

The moment the trio seizes Dan and Lisa as hostages, Over Your Dead Body transitions from a sharp, elevated meta-comedy into a more conventional home-invasion thriller. And when Taccone does attempt to inject humor into these sequences, it feels profoundly out of place. The issue is that Taccone’s humor, while possessing a dark undertone, lacks the necessary cruel streak to maintain the tone throughout the film’s brutal second half. His comedic approach leans towards the goofier side, with some moments so absurd they could easily be mistaken for a Lonely Island sketch. This tone is ill-suited for Over Your Dead Body, especially when it incorporates some of the Norwegian original’s darker, more violating elements.

The cast also doesn’t particularly benefit Over Your Dead Body. Jason Segel, who adopts a vacant stare in an effort to embody the film’s more brutal aspects, seems miscast, especially for Dan’s transformation reminiscent of Straw Dogs. Samara Weaving largely operates in a “final-girl” capacity, subtly resisting Lisa’s less appealing traits. Olyphant and Lewis are the ones who best align with the story’s dark frequency, conveying a wonderfully sinister delight in holding their new captives. However, even their performances cannot rescue the film from feeling like a misguided Hollywood adaptation of a distinctive style of Norwegian black humor.

Over Your Dead Body was initially slated to be directed by The Trip’s director Tommy Wirkola, before he departed the project in 2024. It’s apparent that Taccone inherited a project initiated by a director with darker, more aggressive sensibilities than his own — evident in the tonal jarring between the two distinct parts and the halfhearted attempts to lighten a brutal script. Even as the film descends into a comically gory bloodbath, it appears to be of two minds; torn between fully embracing horror-comedy or committing to the brutality. This leaves one wishing Taccone had the resolve to lean into the latter, rather than retreating to the comfort of a goofy, Lonely Island-esque meta-joke.

Over Your Dead Body premiered at SXSW on March 14. It will be released in theaters on April 24.