Movie Review: She Dies Tomorrow

She Dies Tomorrow **** ½ / *****
Directed by: Amy Seimetz.
Written by: Amy Seimetz.
Starring: Kate Lyn Sheil (Amy), Jane Adams (Jane), Kentucker Audley (Craig), Katie Aselton (Susan), Chris Messina (Jason), Tunde Adebimpe (Brian), Jennifer Kim (Tilly), Olivia Taylor Dudley (Erin), Josh Lucas (Doc), Michelle Rodriguez (Sky), Adam Wingard (Dune Buggy Man), Madison Calderon (Madison).

Too few people saw Amy Seimetz’s wonderful directorial debut – Sun Don’t Shine (2012), which featured a wonderful performance by indie mainstay Kate Lyn Sheil, which was released in the aftermath of Shane Carruth’s remarkable Upstream Color (2013) – a mistake I hope people are rectifying in the wake of all the deserved praise She Dies Tomorrow is receiving (the history of abuse Seimetz has suffered at the hands of Carruth casts an unfortunate, but undeniable, dark cloud over Upstream Color – which is a truly great movie, and not just Carruth’s achievement – as Seimetz’s amazing performance in that film should have won her an Oscar – and really makes the entire film work – but we may never be able to watch the film the same way again). As a director, Seimetz doesn’t like exposition – she dives right into her stories midstream, and makes you catch up with them. She Dies Tomorrow is a remarkable film – mainly plotless, mainly about death, and Seimetz has perhaps inadvertently made the film that best sums up 2020.

The film opens on the wonderfully expressive face of Kate Lyn Shiel – who plays a character named Amy (perhaps marking the film as at least somewhat autobiographical for Seimetz). It’s clear that Amy is in some sort of extreme breakdown – but it only becomes clear what it is slowly. She is convinced, absolutely convinced, that she is going to die tomorrow – how or why, she doesn’t know, or doesn’t reveal – but she just knows. This remarkable first scene continues – and shows you what the style of the movie is going to be – eventually Amy will stare into the lights coming from a room in her house – we see her face as she stares, not what she is looking at.

At some point during this scene, Amy talks on the phone to Jane (Jane Adams, another indie mainstay who can always be counted on to deliver great work). She is tired of Amy’s breakdowns – and doesn’t know what to do with this one. But once off the phone with her, she too, is filled with the overwhelming sense that she will die tomorrow. She crashes a birthday party thrown by her brother Jason (Chris Messina) for his wife Susan (Katie Aselton) – with another couple. Susan, like Jane with Amy, is tired of these breakdowns of Jane’s – thinks it’s always about putting the attention on herself. Soon though, each person at the party has the same sense – they will die tomorrow. And they will all look into the lights at some point, at something we don’t know. The lights are different colors for each of them though – implying, of course, that whatever lies ahead, it’s different for each of them.

This is how Seimetz makes her remarkable film. The film will flash back and forth in time, again, not explaining the how or why of it all, trusting the audience to figure it all out, and between all these characters. Her years in the indie world have certainly meant that she has made a lot of contacts – a lot of friends – and her film is full of talented actor for Shiel and Adams and Messina and Aselton to Tunde Adebimpe, Jennifer Kim, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Adam Wingard (who directed Seimetz in the really good horror film You’re Next) – and even some more “mainstream” talent like Josh Lucas (whose best work was in the indie The Mend) and Michelle Rodriguez. These actors all undeniably help Seimetz, as they deliver wonderful, and often small, performances. No one is better than Shiel – an actress always worth watching in anything (seriously, her performances, both large and small in films as varied as The Color Wheel, You’re Next, Sun Don’t Shine, The Sacrament, Listen Up Philip – where she hilariously has one scene, and runs away from the main character, making her the sanest one in it - , The Heart Machine, Queen of Earth, Brigsby Bear and the “documentary” Kate Plays Christine – and many, many more is as impressive as any actress working today). She and Seimetz are clearly on the same wavelength here – and she delves as deep as she ever has before.

The film itself is remarkable. It reminded me a little of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia – a film I have been meaning to revisit, as I loved much of it, but also felt Trier’s mocking on some characters was so overly harsh that it keeps me from loving it as much as some of his other work. That film is about the coming apocalypse – and how each of the characters handle it. She Dies Tomorrow is the same thing, on a smaller, more intimate scale – our own, personal apocalypse as it were that comes for all of us. The characters in the film don’t band together to face the threat together – they are isolated, alone in it. We all face death by ourselves, staring into our own personal light.

This may sound like a downer of a film, but it isn’t. At times it doesn’t play like a horror film – the fear experienced is surely visceral at moments to be sure. At times, it is an insanely dark comedy – like everything to do with the leather jacket. It is a film about death – so it’s not a pick-me-up – but it’s not a depressing dirge either. It shows what a talented filmmaker Seimetz is – and hopefully, we don’t have to wait another 8 years for her follow-up.