Watching: The Dead Don't Die

I don't like zombie films, but I do like Jim Jarmusch's films, so I went to see his new one, The Dead Don't Die, despite it being a zombie film. Or at least, it's a film with zombies in it, though essentially it's a Jim Jarmusch film; slow-moving, more concerned with meditating on the state of the world than moving the plot along, populated with interestingly eccentric characters, in this case the residents of the town of Centerville (pop. 738), including the three members of the town's police department (police chief Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny), the hobbit-obsessed proprietor of the gas station, three inmates of the local juvenile detention centre, and Tilda Swinton's katana-wielding Scottish undertaker. And then there are the zombies, reanimated after "polar fracking" knocks the Earth off its axis and attacking the town's living residents while desperately seeking out the things they were most drawn to in life.

I enjoyed the Jarmusch weirdness, and could watch Tilda Swinton being badass all night, but I thought the film was trying to juggle too many strands, so some plot threads felt unresolved. Also, I still don't like zombie films, and found the zombie scenes unpleasantly gory. I didn't hate the film, but it certainly didn't come anywhere near the gorgeous, lyrical Only Lovers Left Alive, or even the quieter, more mundane poetry of Paterson.