Honestly, I wasn't prepared for how completely insane this movie was going to become... At first, I thought I was watching some really dark relationship comedy about a married couple who absolutely cannot stand each other anymore.
Then the bodies started piling up.
The movie follows Dan and Lisa, played by Jason Segel and Samara Weaving. They're married, but "unhappy marriage" doesn't even begin to describe what is going on between these two... They're basically at the point where divorce would probably be the healthiest option but instead of doing that like normal people, both of them secretly decide to murder the other.
Yes... I mean Both!!..
They head off to a remote cabin pretending that they're trying to reconnect and fix their marriage, while each one is secretly preparing a plan to kill the other and honestly, that setup had me immediately interested because how badly does a marriage have to go before you look at your partner and think, "You know what? Murder might actually be easier." ...
The funny thing is that Dan and Lisa aren't completely innocent victims either... They both have their own reasons for being miserable, and the movie slowly reveals more about what has happened between them...
Dan is a struggling filmmaker whose career has basically gone nowhere, while Lisa is an actress who has her own frustrations with their relationship... There's cheating, resentment, jealousy and years of problems sitting underneath everything...
So even though the movie is ridiculous, there is actually something uncomfortable about watching two people who clearly used to love each other reach this point and then the movie completely changes...
Without getting into spoilers, strangers show up at the cabin and suddenly Dan and Lisa have much bigger problems than killing each other..
Now they have to worry about surviving and this is where Over Your Dead Body turns into a full-on bloody survival movie...
The amount of violence in this thing genuinely surprised me.
People get stabbed...
People get shot...
People lose body parts and there are some absolutely disgusting injuries.
If you're not comfortable with gore, please don't watch this while eating but somehow, the movie still tries to make all of this funny and that's probably the biggest thing I'm still trying to decide how I feel about...
Sometimes the dark comedy works really well... There are moments where I genuinely laughed because the situation is so ridiculous that you don't know what else to do... Other times, the movie takes the violence a little too far and the joke doesn't really land..
That's where I think the movie struggles.
It doesn't always know whether it wants to be a relationship comedy, a horror movie or a serious thriller... It keeps jumping between them and honestly, sometimes it works...
Sometimes it doesn't...
Jason Segel and Samara Weaving are definitely the reason it remains watchable, though...
Segel is really good at playing this miserable, slightly pathetic guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else and Weaving is fantastic at playing Lisa because she has this energy where you can never completely tell what she's thinking...
Both characters are terrible in their own ways, but that's part of the fun.. I wouldn't say I was constantly rooting for either of them.. I was mostly sitting there thinking:
"Okay, let's see which one of these idiots survives."
The supporting cast is also pretty entertaining, especially Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis. They bring some extra craziness into an already ridiculous situation but I think the movie's biggest weakness is that the relationship at the center doesn't always feel as convincing as it should...
We're told that Dan and Lisa have years of history, resentment and love behind them, but sometimes I wanted more of that emotional connection because if you're going to make me watch a married couple trying to murder each other, I want to understand what made them fall apart in the first place, instead the movie sometimes feels more interested in finding new ways to hurt people, and to be fair... It does that VERY well.
Visually, the movie is pretty good. The isolated cabin setting works perfectly because there's nowhere to escape to....
Once everything starts going crazy, the location almost becomes another character...
You're trapped there with them and that's what makes some of the scenes surprisingly tense...
What I also appreciated is that the movie doesn't take itself too seriously.
It knows it's ridiculous.
It knows the situation is completely over the top and if you go into it expecting a realistic relationship drama, you're probably going to hate it but if you go in expecting a bloody, twisted, dark comedy about two terrible spouses trying to survive, then I think you'll have a much better time....
For me, the movie was definitely uneven because The first part is slower and more focused on the marriage.... then the second half basically says, "Forget all that, let's start breaking bones."
Some of the jokes are great.
Some completely miss.
The gore is impressive but occasionally excessive and the story gets a little messy toward the end..
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Rating: 75/100
