Samara Weaving and Jason Segel are a mutually murderous married couple in the pitch black remake, Over Your Dead Body.
Married couple Dan (Jason Segel), a failed filmmaker, and Lisa (Samara Weaving), a struggling actor, are off for a relaxing weekend at their lakeside cabin. As it happens, they’re both planning to murder each other; he’s roped in his ex-con buddy Henry (Jake Curran) to help with an overly elaborate plot, while she has chosen the far simpler route of staging a hunting accident and blowing his head off.
The wheels have already come off both their plots when they discover they’re not alone. Two escaped criminals, Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Todd (Keith Jardine) are hiding in the attic, along with their accomplice, Allegra (Juliette Lewis), a rogue corrections officer and Pete’s lover. They want money and sanctuary, and they’re way more ruthless than our two would-be killers.
Directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone (the underappreciated masterpiece Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping), Over Your Dead Body is a remake of the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip by Dead Snow and Violent Night director Tommy Wirkola, and the basic story survives the translation almost completely intact. The tone is more comedy than action, and more action than horror, but all three are in the mix. Screenwriters Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney deploy a flashback-heavy narrative structure, dropping seemingly random elements into the story, then jumping back in time to explain how we got here, allowing for plenty of twists and turns to keep us on our tones.
As the hapless and ineffectual Dan, Jason Segel is in familiar territory here, “put-upon schlub” having been his go-to on-screen persona for ages now. Samara Weaving’s Lisa is similarly familiar; this isn’t the first time Australia’s Own Scream Queen has played a tough-talking, resourceful woman fighting her way out of a horrifying situation, after all. At least this time out she gets to keep her natural accent, and all else aside, it’s a joy to see Weaving trade savage barbs with Segel in genuine ‘Strine.
On the evil side of the ledger (well, for a given value of “evil” – Over Your Dead Body’s moral landscape is tricky territory to navigate), Timothy Olyphant is clearly having a blast as the superficially charming Pete, with Jardine and Lewis committing to the bit as the supporting villains. Unfortunately, committing to the bit leads us to some awkward places; there’s an extended sequence where Dan is threatened with rape by the hulking Jardine’s Dan. It’s played for laughs, but it’s an uncomfortable bit of business that stretches on for way too long.
It’s a gag that would have played fine in the post-Tarantino, post-Rodriguez ‘90s, mind you, and ultimately that’s what Over Your Dead Body feels like: a throwback to the edgier end of the indie pool of that period. The humour is pitch black, the violence impactful and at times impressively gnarly, and the whole thing is steeped in a kind of wry cynicism. If nothing else, “So… how would you kill me?” makes for spicier post-viewing conversation than usual.
Over Your Dead Body is streaming on Prime Video now.
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