She Dies Tomorrow

Some Time To Die

She Dies Tomorrow
USA 2020
Directed by Amy Seimetz
Blue Finch Films

Warning: This film has been called spoiler proof by angry reviewers, it seems to me but, I think it’s fair to say this review has light spoilers.

Okay, I’ll say up front that I have mixed feelings about She Dies Tomorrow. I sought it out on a recommendation from someone and so it does have its fans but, it seems there’s a heck of a lot of negative criticism for this film too and I can kinda see why. That being said there’s very little in the film not to like, except for the lack of clarity on the central premise... but it’s a great hook.

We start off with a character called Amy (played by Kate Lyn Sheil from the great Brigsby Bear, reviewed here). Clearly something is wrong with her and then we flash to someone who we later find out was in a relationship with her... he is in a room and starts going mad thinking he’s going to die tomorrow. Then Amy wakes up from a nightmare and returns to her empty house. She rings a friend because she’s anxious... she keeps stopping and starting as a realisation hits her every now and again. At some point the title of the movie is suddenly flashed on the screen for two seconds, blaring music like a jump scare... and then we continue to watch Amy slowly becoming disjointed from reality. Is a sequence showing blood cells interacting, a hint that she has a virus? She starts exploring textures with her sense of touch and looking at things... caressing flat surfaces as something which sounded a bit like Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (it’s probably not but that’s what it reminded me of) plays over and over on her vinyl record turntable. 

Her friend Jane (played by Jane Adams) comes and Amy tells her the thing which has been bothering her. She knows for a fact that she is going to die tomorrow... or at least she believes she will. Jane thinks she is having an alcoholic relapse (which technically she also is because, she’s drinking like there’s no tomorrow... because she believes that’s the case) and goes off. However, when we follow Jane home, she also gets the same idea that she, herself, is going to die tomorrow.

While Amy checks out the best cremation urns on the internet and decides she wants to be turned into a leather jacket after she dies, we follow the ‘also coming unhinged’ as she crashes her brother’s wife’s small birthday party... and tells them she’s going to die. Not long after she leaves them, the four people there also believe they will die the next day. 

And so it goes as we follow, primarily, Amy and Jane (and a few others but to a lesser degree) as they go about the evening contemplating their existence and getting into encounters with people they also infect with.... I dunno... an idea. 

At some point, the flashbacks from Amy’s very recent past, which eventually dovetails back into the start of the movie, show us how she came to be ‘infected’ but doesn’t show how the chain starts and, I’m sad to say, doesn’t clue us in to what’s happening. Now, that might have been okay... like a good zombie movie, the cause of the effect is rarely discussed but, in this case, there’s no actual pay off either and I think that’s why people may be having a problem with it (at least, some of the appalling reviews I’ve read). I also normally don’t mind when a movie doesn’t have a traditional closure moment but, frankly, with a mystery concept and leaving us with no idea if any of the people in this do, actually, die tomorrow... it feels a little off.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that this film is basically taking an idea... if you think about it, it’s very much an M. R. James pass the curse story variation on Casting The Runes, found in such as movies like Ringu, Drag Me To Hell and It Follows (except there’s no getting rid of it so it’s a little more like a virus in some ways)... and then exploring the responses and reactions of the people who have been hit by this growing pandemic of certainty that they are going to meet their own demise the next day. And, yeah, I do appreciate the emotional areas into which this film strays and the way in which it explores humanity’s reaction to the prospect of its near demise... but the hook could have had just a little more back up to it, I felt. 

That being said, the director has an eye for interesting visuals. So some nice shot compositions where, for instance, Amy is framed by an upright rectangle formed by an alcove-like space into another room. And she certainly demonstrates that she’s into textures as much as her namesake protagonist, sometimes using big, vertical solid blocks to split the frame. And there’s also a lot of bright, flashing colour in certain sequences too... during episodes when the ‘victims’ lives are invaded by sudden spurts of enveloping lighting like they just strayed into a David Lynch nightmare and then are suddenly hit by distorted, indecipherable voices in the background (we know from one character that she’s hearing the voices of people long dead in her life)... so, yeah, visually the film is an absolute treat.

And so is the acting. Everyone is great in this and it feels like one of those films where certain things might have been left unscripted and worked on with the actors to build up their characters and scenes. Possibly not but, if this was strictly following the script then that would be a surprise to me, for sure. I suspect there was a lot of improvisation on the film.

So... I got a lot out of the film for sure but Tomorrow She Dies is not something I would recommend to many people (if any) because it sets up and executes such an intriguing prospect... I even thought we were heading into Philip K. Dick ‘reality is not what it seems’ territory at one point... but fails to deliver any hint or clue as to what is really going on. Like the ground zero moment for this ‘infection’ and I get the feeling that this concept must have been explored by the writer but then maybe just deliberately pared back for the audience and it just didn’t quite make it for me. It felt just a little bit thrown away and so, while I appreciated the way the concept was explored and the ideas it threw up as a consequence, I don’t think this is one I’d watch again.