She Dies Tomorrow — She Dies Tomorrow(Blu Ray)

In She Dies Tomorrow, her second feature film, Amy Seimetz tells us the story of Amy. Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) has just moved into a brand spanking new house with the hope of beginning her life afresh after a series of traumatic events, However she is soon struck with a sudden and irrational fear that today is her last day on Earth and that come the morning she will die, a belief that slowly becomes more and more infectious by the minute. With friends visiting, parties being crashed and doctors being visited it becomes a matter of time before everyone believes they have one final night to live.

There’s a film, a particular favourite of mine, called Cleo From 5 to 7 and directed by Agnes Varda. This film from 1962 tackles Cleo’s irrational belief that she has cancer and will die imminently, leading her on a path of nihilistic self-reflection. Cleo is expertly directed and handles its themes by constantly bringing the title character into new situations and explores the effects of her nihilism with great depth. It is designed to highlight the irrationality of nihilism without ever mocking it at as a philosophy. Seimetz on the other hand takes many of the same ideas but fails to effectively develop a deeper exploration of nihilism.

As a result of not quite understanding the nuance of a subject matter like this, we are stuck watching a large swathe of scenes which just involve people having conversations and scenes about how irrational actions cause irrational results. There is a scene where a son kills his father by tampering with his life support, a conversation that ends up with son’s girlfriend breaking up with him. Seimetz’s film is more interested in just showing unpleasant things happen to slightly annoying people. The realisation of the infectious thought itself is very underwhelming, mostly because it relies heavily on a series of flashing coloured lights which attempt to create a 2001-style effect. There are some strong moments of direction however, many scenes are framed with great claustrophobia and there’s an interesting centralisation of all the characters within the frame to show how disconnected they are with the events of the world around them.

The performances feel held back by Seimetz’s ‘first student film’ direction style. Sheil’s Amy and Jane Adams’ Jane getting the shortest end of the stick here as they are most stuck mumbling dialogue in a way that seems vaguely sad, or they are staring into the middle distance longingly. In a stage direction I am read ‘Amy contemplates life.’ There’s a fun cameo from horror director Adam Wingard, which is a cool little bit of fanservice for horror fans but I don’t think it's worth sitting through a really shoddily-paced drama.

The bonus features on Radiance’s new Blu-ray release help to redeem the film’s new release. We get a pair of interviews, a brand new interview from Sheil and Adam plus an interview from the time of the film’s original release from the director and cinematographer Jay Keitel which provides some interesting insights into how this film’s production was achieved using the director’s house and the problems that came with shooting in such a tight space. There is also a new video essay from Anton Bitel about the film’s place and relation with the canon of contagion films, it’s a good enough essay although lacks a lot of intertextuality. Rounding off the package is an audio commentary from critic Anna Bogutskaya, which I think does a slightly better job of exploring the film’s narrative themes than Bitel’s essay.

There’s a type of music called ‘landfill indie’; this brand of indie music that attempts to crib from the trending bands of the noughties indie music boom. I’m going to coin the phrase ‘landfill Lynch’ to describe films like She Dies Tommorrow; films that attempt to capture the mystery and ambiguity of Lynch’s filmography but forget to add the same thematic depth that those films have. There is promise in Seimetz’s style because she obviously knows what she’s doing in the visual department but her script and subject matter lack a nuance that is present in other films influenced by Lynch’s style.