She Dies Tomorrow Isn't a Typical Horror Film

Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) is having a particularly shitty day. A getaway with an interesting new guy has hit an impasse, and what some would call a fatalistic funk holds sway. The routine of favorite records helps a bit, as does the wine. But this is a bad emotional place for Amy, suddenly back on the booze, and it seems like what she’d like best is to just vanish into the wall, despite her exquisite scarab-beaded cocktail dress and leaf-blower ensemble. She’s unequivocally not suicidal, but has become fixated on her own death — and it’s happening tomorrow.

So Amy reaches out to her friend Jane (Jane Adams, from Happiness and The Anniversary Party). Jane’s seen Amy drunk before, so she has to battle out her impulses between being a supportive friend and also not supporting a destructive relapse — not to mention a birthday party for her hated sister-in-law looming (though there will be cake, so there’s that). Amy’s insistence that her inevitable death is waiting for her tomorrow tends to grate. But no matter where the night takes either of these women, that fixed end point looms. And it’s spreading, because now Jane has that teleology stuck in her head as well.

That’s the hook of She Dies Tomorrow, and it’s silky-smooth, so you don’t even notice that it’s already got you — think of Pontypool or Sinister, in which the moment of awareness is your passage into the surreal otherworld, or to a lesser extent, that amazing teaser for the remake of The Hills Have Eyes 2, with its reveal that the film has in fact already killed you.

Writer-director Amy Seimetz (she did the emotional heavy lifting in the 2019 Pet Sematary remake and directed the first season of The Girlfriend Experience) knocks it out of the park. This is experimental and existential horror that disassembles every emotional and social crisis you’ve been steeping in for the past few months, and serves up something transcendent and beautiful that will put your emotions through the ringer. We’re out of sync with time, and color palette is essential to understanding the fragmentary nature of how things are unfolding. You don’t unlock this film — you sort of ease into its spaces and moods. It’s a puzzle that you can’t quite touch, diaphanous and mysterious.

I can see some people having issues with She Dies Tomorrow, because this isn’t a typical horror film — there’s no monster or murderer (other than time). But I think it’s more likely that people are going to be taken aback by what this film tells us about ourselves, because it certainly told me about myself, like a therapist with a comfy chair with unexpected poky angles. 

If you’ve been stewing in your own anxieties and powerless to keep from doom-scrolling your way through whatever unspeakable horrors the world has to offer, this speaks right to the heart. I wasn’t expecting an emotional exorcism, and more than that I wasn’t expecting this to be quite as open-hearted and mordantly funny as it is. The supporting cast is great (including TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Fast/Furious alumna Michelle Rodriguez and indie icon Kentucker Audley), and I am in awe that a film this cathartic and disarmingly weird is getting as wide a release as movies do these days. If you’ve been wanting to find some art to help metabolize some COVID-era angst, this will help.

She Dies Tomorrow will show July 31-Aug. 6 at the Stardust Drive-In, and will come to Video on Demand Aug. 6.