It’s easier to name the body parts that aren’t dismembered, shot off or stabbed in Jorma Taccone’s thrilling if shaggy action comedy, “Over Your Dead Body.” The Lonely Island member knows how to take the raw materials of dysfunction and argument between two people who’ve fallen out of love, and fashion them into the type of genre fare that makes you wince and laugh. His blithe sensibilities are well matched in this American remake of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 film “The Trip.”
The film squeezes every last bit of blood (and some other bodily fluids) that sees a couple, Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving), go to an isolated cabin together, under the guise of reconnecting, each one unaware that the other is trying to kill them. A languorous second act nearly derails its momentum, but the bookends are so strong that by the time the credits roll, all you’ll be thinking about are the highs. Taccone and his team have managed to take the existential and interior strife common in a marriage and transfigure it into a riotous and convivial physical battle for survival and sanity.
Before blood can be shed and almost an entire butcher block of kitchen knives finds their way into a poor soul’s back, writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney (also at the festival with “Pizza Movie”) give insight into the type of corrosive relationship that might compel one to murder their spouse. The embers of passion between Dan and Lisa have long cooled, having curdled into a spiteful tolerance. They’re both unsatisfied in their present vocations – as a director of pop-up commercials and a struggling theater actress, respectively, and blame each other to some extent. The opening sequence perhaps best summarizes their current feelings: Dan directs a commercial wherein a couple in the midst of their wedding vows suddenly pause to advertise a product. For Dan and Lisa, their marriage feels far more like an economic proposition than an outward commitment of their love to each other.
The first act of the film is a two-hander, and Segel and Weaving make their arguments feel lived in and empathetic; it’s hard not to bristle with rage at how Dan condescendingly berates his wife’s acting or recoil at how Lisa sardonically teases Dan for his creative burnout. Taccone understands that when couples have been together for so long, the smallest of conflicts can open the floodgates of long-gestating frustrations. It’s thrilling because it’s so specific, and the duo can hurt each other with such polished hatred. The insults are deliciously calibrated, calculated to deliver maximum damage.
While most of the film sees them slip barbs to each other when they can, once they both get their cards on the table and realize they each want to kill each other, the subtext becomes text, and Taccone mines the film’s biggest laughs. One standout scene is when Dan and Lisa both act out the remorse they would showcase to the authorities if they managed to successfully kill the other, culminating in a hilarious moment where both try and are mostly unsuccessful in squeezing tears out of their eyes. The film does try its best to make both parties seem toxic, although Segel, perhaps to his credit, plays the insecure, unlikeable Dan almost too well that it becomes hard not to root against his insouciance when Weaving’s rage feels so fully embodied.
It may seem a bit histrionic as to why the two would not consider literally any other option before murder, but Taccone positions the duo as two people who feel stifled by each other, and understands that when people are trapped, they’ll do anything they can to taste freedom. Matt Weston’s cinematography also helps push this motive to the realm of believability; Tampere, Finland, acts as the stand-in for Upstate New York here, and the way Weston captures its isolating beauty underscores how such charms can amplify virulent impulses.
Dan and Lisa’s property is surrounded by lush foliage and an expansive lake, and Weston consistently frames the couple, whether they’re together and alone, in a way that emphasizes their smallness in comparison to the grandiosity of the nature around them. They may be in paradise, but they’re shackled there.
The film shifts to a different gear when, in the midst of their struggle, one of them (they each blame the other) fires a gunshot into the roof, which causes three escaped criminals who have been squatting there to crash down into the house. They’re all played colorfully, if not one note, by Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, and Keith Jardine, but as rewarding as it might be to see Dan and Lisa have to work with and not against each other, the film loses its focus with the introduction of new players. The film shifts tone from one of marital strife to a cat-and-mouse thriller, wherein the gun-toting convicts demand that the couple give them money. Some of these foibles may be inherent to the script Kocher and McElhaney are adapting, but with such limited space in the house and too few characters, you can’t kill anyone off too quickly, or you don’t have enough movie. Dan and Lisa simply take turns being the one about to die, before the other saves them.
The first time Jardine’s Todd points a gun at Lisa, Matthew Compton’s score swells, and then Dan saves her, it’s entertaining. By the time this happened for the seventh time, I was hoping that at least someone would die so things could be kept interesting. The fights themselves are staged and executed with a raucous propulsion; no one in the group of five is an experienced fighter, but they’re all driven by a desperation to survive, and that shared drive keeps the fights kinetic and free-flowing.
Taccone and his team have managed to take the existential and interior strife common in a marriage and transfigure it into a riotous and convivial physical battle for survival and sanity. There’s nothing like a crisis that reveals who someone truly is, and the irony of Dan and Lisa turning their blades, bullets, and chloroform from each other to their assailants, as they begin to see – perhaps for the first time since their wedding – why they fell in love with each other. So few are ever offered the gift of that revelation, and while the flaws of “Over Your Dead Body” are too glaring to fully disavow, to expect perfection from any partner, embodied or cinematic, is a fool’s game. Taccone’s film is worth a glance, and even if the honeymoon period ends, it’s an easy vessel to place your affection.
“Over Your Dead Body” opens exclusively in theaters on April 24.
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