She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

Directed & Written by Amy Seimetz

Another VOD horror release this week folks! No clue when the theaters near me are supposed to open, and I don’t think I’d go there right now even if they opened tomorrow. That’s fine though because there’re still a ton of new horror movies coming out ready to be viewed in the comfort of your home. I’m tackling one of those movies today with She Dies Tomorrow, a critically acclaimed feature that I was excited to finally see. I was less excited when in the first 15 minutes I realized I was not going to like this movie at all. Please, before you leave a comment saying that I’m an idiot who can’t appreciate good cinema just give me a chance to explain myself. You can still call me an idiot at the end if you want.

The Premise!

She Dies Tomorrow is the story of a woman, Amy, who believes she is going to die tomorrow. The film follows Amy as she interacts with multiple people, many of whom come to believe afterward that they, too, will die tomorrow, as if this thought is an infectious disease. This thought-illness travels so on and so forth, as all these people deal with the changes in their lives brought about by these new feelings. This is an admittedly bare-bones summary, but She Dies Tomorrow is not a, shall we say, traditional narrative film. Maybe that’s part of the reason why it doesn’t work for me, at all.

I Got A Very Unique Feeling From This Film.

Sometimes I’ll watch a movie and during it I’ll get this warm feeling inside and think, “Wow, this movie was made with me in mind. This team managed to make a movie speaking directly to me and I feel so understood.” When I watched She Dies Tomorrow, I felt whatever the exact opposite of that is. Of course not every movie has to have me as its target audience, nor should it, but I don’t think I’m alone when I say that if someone had a film project where the goal was to make a movie that was as alienating to me as possible, they could have turned this film in and gotten an A+. 

This Is A Character Driven Movie, I Think?

With that being said let me get a bit more into the hows and whys, and give credit where credit is due. As I stated earlier, this movie does not have a typical narrative structure, there’s no grand plot or reveal, there’s very little dialogue outside of people saying, “I Will Die Tomorrow” and then saying how that makes them feel, and most of the character information we are given is through lighting and subtle performance cues like their posture or how their eyes look. If I had to call this movie driven by anything, I’d say it was a character driven movie and that was kind of a problem for me because I never liked, identified with, or even found interesting, any of the characters, save one, and that made the movie impossible to enjoy. 

This Film Moved A Bit Slow For My Taste.

This character issue is such a phenomenal sticking point with me not only because I didn’t care much about what happened to these people, but also because the pacing of the movie is so dependent on these characters and their performances. Most of the scenes here are drawn out reflections by these people that they are going to die and how they respond to that, there isn’t much story otherwise, so if you don’t find these characters engaging, then you are in for a rough time. The pacing is glacial. This is only an 85 minute movie and I cannot stress how much longer than that this movie feels, especially because during these sequences of characters feeling things, nothing else is happening. Interestingly, I liked She Dies Tomorrow significantly more when no one is talking because the real strong suit of this film is its visual style.

I Did Like A Lot Of The Visuals Though!

Generally I enjoyed the cinematography, but what really struck me was the clever use of color and lighting to convey mood and characters’ emotional states. Specifically, there’s a wonderful use of color early in the film when Amy is beginning to go through her troubles, where these alternating blue and red lights frame her face and it’s a neat effect that contours her face to make her look like she’s a different person as the lighting changes. There’s some other good shots, good uses of lighting and color, and good set pieces, but it’s all in service of something that doesn’t connect with me. One reason I suspect it doesn’t reach me may have something to do with generational differences.

Now For Me To Try To Explain My Indifference.

Technically, Amy Seimetz and I (and my wife who watched this movie with me and generally shares my feelings on it) are all millennials, but we are at opposite ends of the millennial spectrum. I suspect that the “existential dread” of imminent death doesn’t have the same fear factor for me and possibly other younger millennials and especially Gen Z’ers, because we’re all pretty familiar with the negative feelings Seimetz is introducing. Cheerful nihilism is something of a meme among young people nowadays and that is very relevant here, because when your generation is shaped by a series of tragedies; numerous school shootings, 9/11, a once-in-a-lifetime recession, the student debt crisis, impending environmental collapse, current political bullshit, the SECOND recession of a lifetime and a global pandemic, many of which are ongoing, you perhaps learn to unconsciously internalize that bad things will just happen to you. We know death is coming. We don’t want to die but we are constantly aware of it. All the characters in She Dies Tomorrow have ‘made it’, they’re homeowners, successful parents, artists doing what they love; a “lowering of status” for these people means facing existential dread. For us, it’s reality.

She Dies Tomorrow Did Nothing For Me, But I’m Curious Who Liked It.

Maybe I’m overselling it. Maybe I would, in actuality, act completely differently if I thought I were going to die tomorrow. I can’t tell the future but I can say how I feel, and that is that She Dies Tomorrow fails to emotionally connect with me and that failure leaves the horror falling flat. I can appreciate the performances, I can appreciate the visuals, but if there is no emotional core to the film, then I can’t fully engage with those aspects. I’m curious to know what other people think of this movie, particularly those who are also in my generation or Gen Z, so if you have seen it please let me know what your thoughts are! As it is right now though, I can’t recommend She Dies Tomorrow. I don’t think it’s a bad movie necessarily and I don’t think Amy Seimetz is a bad writer/director, but I didn’t get anything from this film.

Tags: Horror movieMovie Review