Writer-director Amy Seimetz’s offbeat fable She Dies Tomorrow is difficult to categorize, except as completely original and unlike anything we’ve seen before.
At first, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on, as we follow Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), who recently has bought a house and is ready to embark on a fling with Craig (Kentucker Audley). But then Amy has an epiphany – she’s going to die tomorrow. No, she hasn’t decided to kill herself – she just is, for lack of a better word, prophesying that something will cause her death tomorrow. That’s pretty heavy and, as anyone would, she becomes fixated on her impending mortality.
Of course, it’s also absurd. How can anyone predict the date of her own natural or accidental death? But here’s where things really get crazy. Amy tells her geeky chemist friend Jane (Jane Adams), and afterward, Jane is convinced that she, also, will die tomorrow. Jane, in her pajamas, crashes the dinner party of her brother Jason (Chris Messina) and unloads her realization. Soon, Jason, his wife and their two guests have been “infected” – and become dazed by the belief that they, too, will die tomorrow. Virus-like, the phenomenon spreads to a seemingly well-grounded doctor (Josh Lucas), a poolside slacker (Michelle Rodriguez) and others.
And here’s another absurdity – how can a psychological disorder (if that’s what this is) be instantly contagious? She Dies Tomorrow is unrelentingly deadpan, so the absurdism is morbidly comic. Each character reacts differently to his/her infection, and this can be pretty funny. Some are profoundly distraught, while one dumps the boyfriend she has found tiresome. Amy’s own ordering of a very special leather jacket is especially perverse.
For all the humor (and this is not guffaw-producing humor), She Dies Tomorrow is also one scary movie. Of all the genres it touches, it is probably closest to horror.
The entire cast is very good. Sheil and Audley starred in Seimetz’s swampy neo-noir Sun Don’t Shine.
For good reason, film critics boost films that break the mold, and She Dies Tomorrow has an Metacritic score of 80. John DeFore wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “Movies like this are why art houses exist.”
She Dies Tomorrow is available on all the major streaming services.