Must-Watch or Miss? A Critical Dive into ‘Over Your Dead Body’ Movie

Over Your Dead Body (now available on streaming services like Amazon Prime Video) presents a captivating concept: Jorma Taccone, a member of the comedic group The Lonely Island, directs a film featuring Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a couple scheming to kill each other, alongside Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis playing eccentric characters. This American adaptation of Tommy Wirkola’s outrageously violent Norwegian black comedy, The Trip, didn’t make waves in theaters, earning just $2 million, a fate humorously foreshadowed by its own meta-commentary on the streaming era. Despite its intriguing premise, the film seems to have slipped under many radars. Let’s find out if it deserves your attention.

The Gist: Did he seriously just flaunt his used tissue? And is she really munching that protein bar with her mouth wide open? These are mere glimpses into how deeply this couple irritates one another—to the point of death. Their relationship is so toxic that in the opening scenes, Dan (Segel) is seen stashing duct tape, rope, and a hacksaw in the car trunk while overtly announcing their trip to the cabin, where his wife Lisa (Weaving) plans a perilous solo mountain hike. Hmm, seems like a bit of premeditation there. Both are unlikable: He’s a failed director relegated to creating pop-up ads, and she’s a not-so-gifted stage actress. They remain together for reasons we can only speculate—likely a complex web of dysfunction, as marriages often are.

Things take a turn when Dan prepares what he mistakenly believes to be Lisa’s favorite meal, intending it to be her last. But as he attempts to incapacitate her with chloroform, Lisa retaliates with a taser, initiating a cascade of bodily fluids and comedic flashbacks. In these flashbacks, Lisa echoes Dan’s announcement of their cabin trip, with the absurd twist that Dan wants them to go hunting. Clearly, they share more than just a mutual murder plot; they’re equally inept at executing it.

The chaos escalates as Dan and Lisa engage in a physical altercation, leading to bloodshed, gun threats, and the accidental death of Dan’s dim-witted partner, Henry (Jake Curran). Amidst this chaos, the ceiling gives way, crashing down under the weight of three bumbling escapees: Todd (Keith Jardine), Pete (Olyphant), and their crooked cop ally Allegra (Lewis). With Dan and Lisa now bound in the basement, their previous grievances—his financial ruin and her infidelity—seem trivial. Perhaps the tale suggests that battling psychotic criminals together is a more exciting, albeit dangerous, alternative to marriage counseling.

And it might just be easier on the wallet, too.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Well, this isn’t exactly a Bergman-level exploration of marriage dynamics. It’s The War of the Roses as directed by the Coen Bros, if they didn’t know when to stop.

Performance Worth Watching: Let’s just say Lewis’ forehead veins come out to PLAY as she and Olyphant fully unhinge themselves.

Sex And Skin: A not-too-graphic sex scene featuring Olyphant’s glutes and a close-up of another butt getting buckshot plucked from the meat; otherwise, the word “graphic” is reserved for all the maiming and bloodletting and shooting-in-the-face-ing.

Our Take: Over Your Dead Body is a grocery list of nasty misdeeds and bodily fluids: Mangled limbs, knives in backs, hacked-off fingers, bitten-off noses, an utterly vile prison-sex wrestling match, all resulting in blood, urine, barf, and various glops and liquids painting the scenery. It had me wondering if we’d seen any spinal fluid hit the dirt, and if it had, would we have noticed, because is spinal fluid colorless? The mind wanders. 

But it wanders only after the fact, because the film keeps us present with extreme prejudice. It’s hard to look away as it veers from a functional acerbic Bickersons poisoned-relationship comedy into a brutal live-action cartoon that’s essentially a 21st-century sadistic Looney Tunes. As bones snap, pancreases are lacerated by kitchen knives and pitchforks, and faces are shot off with shotguns without a single utterance of “Wabbit season!”, we rollercoaster through crayzee cutaways and twists as Taccone and the cast work to one-up each successive nasty, nasty scene. There are moments here that are so shockingly repugnant, laughter leapt from my esophagus in an act of self-preservation. Is this stuff truly funny? Yeah, kind of, and I’m not particularly proud to admit that. (Note: One thing that remains not particularly funny at all is the ironic needle drop of an upbeat song over a scene of extreme violence. Banish this trope to the moon of Uranus!)

But the heart elucidates what the brain cannot, or something, I guess. The issue some will have with Over Your Dead Body is the gross putrescence of these ucky characters – who gets our emotional investment, the killers over here or the killers over there? Do we root for Dan and Lisa’s happily ever after, or would you rather see all of them end up on the vulture-feeding pile? I have no good answer for that. This is quite the assemblage of assholes, like a parade of donkeys that stopped to lift tail and let rip. You get the sense that Taccone wouldn’t want it any other way.

Our Call: If you made it this far, you already know if this is Your Kind Of Movie or not. For me, it worked more in fits and starts than poops and farts. STREAM IT, but know what you’re getting into first. 

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.