‘Over Your Dead Body’ review: Murder and marriage

Jason Segel and Samara Weaving are an inspired pair of amateur killers in Jorma Taccone’s sloppy, but funny Over Your Dead Body.

A romantic comedy doesn’t have to be so specific. For a genre that’s been around as long as cinema itself, it rarely steps outside of its comfort zone. Which is a shame because every movie genre needs to be turned on its heads once in a while. For every Pretty Woman or Sleepless in Seattle, you need a 500 Days of Summer or a Chasing Amy: something that follows the beats of a rom-com with one or two outstanding twists on the premise of boy-meets-girl and so on. Those latter two films could be described as “anti-rom-coms” and that format leaves plenty of room to expand or test with something really screwy.

Enter Over Your Dead Body, a remake of the 2021 Norwegian thriller The Trip. This trip follows Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) as they drive to a remote cabin the woods for a weekend getaway.  Dan is a failed movie director stuck making pop-up ads for brands and drifting aimlessly through life. Lisa is a struggling actress wondering why she ended up in a relationship with such a weak, whiny man. She’s also wondering why Dan used this cabin escape as a cover for his true intentions: to kill Lisa and take her insurance money. Little does Dan know that Lisa planned to kill him too. As the couple start to really grasp their relationship status, they’re interrupted by a trio of strangers (Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, and Keith Jardine) who send their weekend into further chaos.

Partners in crime.

Whether you have a standard rom-com or something more subversive, you need chemistry from your two leads. Over Your Dead Body has a pair of pairs that work remarkably well together (and on their own). Segel always looks like a big friendly oaf with shaggy hair, a kind face, and a tone that’s always reassuring. Yet he can make his presence lumbering or intimidating when he wants to, turn his grin and eyes into something creepy, and deliver self-loathing lines with a lot of believability. All of that is to say this is one of Segel’s best-ever performances as he makes Dan’s pathetic nature funny and sad in equal doses. He’s got a perfect foil in Weaving’s sneering, somewhat-dorky energy that keeps Segel on his toes. For all the vile lines the pair throw at each other, you can also tell they’re having a blast going back and forth.

Photo Credit: Independent Film Company

Not only do the leads work, but their guests bring a fun amount of chaos. Olyphant and Lewis, known for playing loose cannons, are champagne casting for the crazy energy they bounce off of each other. Olyphant brings his trademark cool with slicked-back hair and raspy drawl, but seeing him lose more and more patience with Lewis as she starts chewing more and more scenery is hilarious. You’re almost rooting for them to make it as much as you are for the leads. Though Jardine is the weak link in the group playing a standard heavy bad guy, he also has good chemistry with Olyphant and Lewis while having a good joke or two. The best part is the two different gangs aren’t in two different movies; they gel together so well by the second act and make Over Your Dead Body rarely lose its momentum.

Dancing with death.

While the movie moves pretty well down the aisle, it also trips on itself quite a few times. Director Jorma Taccone of The Lonely Island does pretty well with the clever setups of the movie’s thriller aspects using time jumps and Chekov’s Gun for good setups and payoffs. Those tricks start to wear thin the more the movie goes on and Taccone doesn’t have much else up his sleeve aside from more gore and a random editing homage to Edgar Wright. What’s worse is how, in the final act, he keeps leaving chances for Dan and Lisa to escape or for the criminal trio to kill the couple and not capitalizing on it simply to keep the movie going. The 105-minute runtime gets very close to overstaying its welcome, only staying afloat by the actors’ comic timing.

What the script lacks in creativity, it mostly makes up for in the character writing. The script from Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney makes it clear that neither Dan nor Lisa are entirely likable. They may be in rough spots in their lives and those spots are certainly relatable, but it doesn’t negate the fact that they’re also awful people for plotting murder. Worse (or funnier, depending how you look at it), they’re terrible plotters and have entertainingly sloppy fight scenes with each other. The moments when Dan and Lisa reveal their true feelings about each other are definitely cliche, but at least the ride to get there is more fun than the usual rom com.

The bottom line.

Over Your Dead Body is not the most groundbreaking antithesis to the rom com, but it has more than enough “com” to make up for the lack of “rom.” It’s consistently funny, even in its weaker moments, thanks to a talented cast and a good balance of humor and human growth. The rom com genre will likely remain unchanged, but it’s good to know that there’s enough wiggle room for the genre to experiment every now and then. And hey, maybe experimentation works for some marriages.

Over Your Dead Body is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Independent Film Company and Antti Rastivo. Read more articles by Jon Winkler here.

Jon Winkler