Movie Review: "Over Your Dead Body" is Never Quite As Dark As Samara Weaving and Jason Segel’s Anti-Chemistry Invites It To Be
9/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/5 Stars
Male comedians will often cast women who are egregiously out of their league to be their love interests when it’s time for their star-making film role. Jason Segel, a gentle but homely looking man, is particularly guilty of this. Kristen Bell. Mila Kunis. Cameron Diaz. Emily Blunt. I could go on. Jorma Taccone’s Over Your Dead Body, a remake of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian film The Trip, takes this dynamic to its logical conclusion. Segel is paired with scream queen Samara Weaving as their miserable marriage treks towards a vicious stand-off.
Segel plays downtrodden film director Dan Burton. Dan had a promising indie film career at one time but is now cashing paychecks directing soulless commercials. Weaving’s Lisa is an out of work actress who spews venom at the very sight of him and it’s hard to blame her. He’s miserable and insecure. So much so that upon planning a weekend getaway to his father’s secluded cabin under the guise of resuscitating their relationship, Dan hatches a plot to kill Lisa. Little does he know that his complete inability to maintain his marriage has also corrupted her. Lisa has murderous plans of her own and when the two become privy to each other’s schemes, all hell breaks loose.
Over Your Dead Body is at its most vibrant when it allows us to stew in Segal and Weaving’s disdain for one another. They each bring a particular brand of acidity that creates a wildly entertaining anti-chemistry. Segal mutates the doe eyed “just a man who is a bit too touch with his emotions” shtick that has made him a comfort food mainstay on Apple TV’s Shrinking into something hilariously pathetic. This man simply cannot help but make himself the victim in any conflict, even when he’s the one who instigated the uncomfortable interaction. Lisa certainly doesn’t try to diffuse things, you could argue that she’s being just as juvenile, but Samara Weaving’s performance inspires far more empathy. We can tell that she’s spent years trying to get Dan to engage with her as a peer instead of a time and money suck to no avail and now she’s just done trying. It is her best on-screen work since Ready or Not. The film’s fantastic first act leans on this dynamic entirely and each petty argument is funnier than the last. It is clear that Segal and Weaving are having an absolute blast tearing into each other and that morbid fun is infectious.
Later on, escaped prison inmates Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Todd (Keith Jardine) along with brainwashed corrections officer Allegra (Juliette Lewis) come into the picture and invade the cabin. This shifts Over Your Dead Body into a very different type of film than the intimate War of the Roses-esque clash of lovers that we’ve been enjoying thus far. Olyphant and Lewis naturally bring high energy but the film oversteps in its’ attempt to make them into genuine threats. Shortly after they arrive and dump their backstory, they inflict an odd and all too lengthy prison sexual assault comedy bit onto Dan that stops the film dead in its’ tracks. It’s the type of crass shock humor that even feels beneath the bro-ish instincts of The Lonely Island’s Taccone. He didn’t trust the scenario to feel dangerous enough just by circumstance and a film that starts by very successfully using morbid and violent humor briefly veers into something a bit too real.
Thankfully, once the 87North action team takes the reins and the characters all start bashing each other’s heads in, Over Your Dead Body completely recovers. While watching Dan and Lisa have to put aside their differences to escape more dangerous assailants is far less transgressive and compelling than where they start, it’s hard to care when the combat is this engrossing. There’s real weight to the violence. Every time someone is whacked or stabbed, we not only get a viscerally human reaction to the pain but also from the person who inflicted it. These are regular people who shrivel when faced with the grizzly consequences of their intrusive thoughts. This becomes a real problem in their life or death struggle against Todd, who is built like a tank and has no interest in playing nice. There are even a few pratfalls that approach being cartoonish until you see the grievous wounds they inflict. It’s the ideal execution of action from a comedy director.
Even though Over Your Dead Body feels somewhat afraid to truly reckon with its’ central couple’s toxic relationship, it is still wildly entertaining to watch them hash it out. Segal and Weaving are such a surgically paired duo and as long as they are on-screen, something unhinged is happening. A filmmaker with a bit more gravitas than Taccone might’ve been able to pull something devastating out of this material but it cannot be denied that he manages the gory chaos more confidently than expected. A film that both happy and miserable couples can enjoy.