There have been several TV shows and movies released this year that have explored the darker side of swearing to spend your life with another human, in sickness and in health and all of that. We’ve gotten Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, The Drama and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, to name a few, and now we can add Over Your Dead Body. Jason Segel and Samara Weaving play a couple who each plan to use their weekend getaway as an opportunity to off their spouse. Over Your Dead Body reviews are in, and they’re painting quite the bloody picture.
Samara Weaving is a modern-day scream queen, so this “deliciously gory” offering is to be expected from her. However, it’s a bit of a turn for director Jorma Taccone (MacGruber and The Lonely Island’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping), as well as for Jason Segel (Shrinking, The Muppets). Angie Han of THR says it works, though, with most of the violence landing in “comically cartoonish” territory, rather than “horrific.” Han says:
The characters’ Looney Tunes-esque tolerance for punishment offers no shortage of opportunities for audiences to groan at the sight of faces getting blown off, yelp at seeing fingers getting sliced off, or giggle at a person’s back getting pierced with an entire knife block’s worth of blades; Taccone does not skimp on the bloody special effects. Among other things, there’s a mangled foot depicted in graphic enough detail to make a resident from The Pitt turn green.
Sarah Campbell of Nerdist agrees, saying Samara Weaving and Jason Segel play well off of each other for a “funny, bitingly gory” good time. Her review of Over Your Dead Body says it’s a pretty intense ride with sarcastic one-liners delivered with expert comedic timing from both leads being one of its strengths. Another, Campbell continues, is:
Article continues belowWhat works well for this movie is its creative use of gore, which is heaps more than I was anticipating going into the theater. The movie carries copious amounts of blood loss and severed body parts, which is perfect for a dark comedy thriller of its nature. Despite the extreme violence, Over Your Dead Body somehow manages to maintain a relatively lighthearted and comedic tone throughout.
In terms of how gory it gets, Zachary Lee of The Wrap says it may be easier to name the body parts that aren’t dismembered, shot off or stabbed. The fun stalls in the middle, but Over Your Dead Body is still very much worth the watch, Lee says, writing:
The film squeezes every last bit of blood (and some other bodily fluids) that sees a couple, Dan and Lisa, go to an isolated cabin together, under the guise of reconnecting, each one unaware that the other is trying to kill them. A languorous second act nearly derails its momentum, but the bookends are so strong that by the time the credits roll, all you’ll be thinking about are the highs. Taccone and his team have managed to take the existential and interior strife common in a marriage and transfigure it into a riotous and convivial physical battle for survival and sanity.
Meanwhile, Katie Rife of IndieWire gives it a C, saying the violence — including that “plastic baggie full of fingers” — is not comedic so much as “numbingly mean-spirited.” Jason Segel and Samara Weaving are mismatched, she says, in this “depressing story about hateful people reveling in each other’s pain.” Rife writes:
The result is a movie where the jokes are just mean, and the meanness isn’t funny, leading to a cynical denouement that’s been done many times before. Over Your Dead Body has nothing to say about relationships, or filmmaking, or violence, although it’s a violent movie about filmmakers who are in a relationship. The stunts, particularly the hand-to-hand combat, are impressive, and although they vary in quality, there are a few effective prosthetic makeups as well.
Jacob Oller of AV Club also thinks the movie mostly misses the mark. The “sprawling gnarliness” of Dan and Lisa’s marital mess gets away from the director, Oller says, as he grades the movie a C in his review. The critic writes:
Over Your Dead Body certainly likes to brutalize its bodies. Shotguns, kitchen knives, lawnmowers, rakes, hammers, billiard balls, teeth, nails—the film deploys everything in the cabin to tear its inhabitants apart. [Keith Jardine and Juliette Lewis] weather their beatings most entertainingly, one a hulking lug and the other a cruel idiot, both more in tune with the tone of the film than either lead.
The Over Your Dead Body reviews are mostly positive, and not just the ones excerpted above. The movie holds a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, so this might be one to check out in theaters, as it was released on Friday, April 24. Jorma Taccone and Jason Segel’s comedic backgrounds signal that there are apparently plenty of laughs to be had, but be warned, this one also comes with a healthy dose of gore. And a baggie of fingers, apparently.
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