A couple heads to a remote cabin for a getaway, only to discover that they both have plans to kill each other.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jorma Taccone
Starring: Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine
Tommy Wirkola's 2021 Norwegian action/horror/comedy hybrid The Trip boasted the sort of high concept elevator pitch that usually leads to an English language remake. That movie even ended with a meta joke about the events of its narrative being recreated in a Hollywood production. Now an English language remake of The Trip has arrived for real under the title Over Your Dead Body. The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone takes the directing reins from Wirkola, with a script courtesy of the sketch comedy duo 'BriTANicK' (Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher).
Jason Segel plays Dan, a director whose only feature film flopped, leading him to support himself through directing pop-up ads. Dan has fallen out of love with his younger wife Lisa (Samara Weaving), an actress whose career is even less successful than her husband's. Taking Lisa on a trip to his father's (Paul Guilfoyle) remote cabin, Dan plans to off his wife and collect the insurance money. Little does he know that Lisa has the very same intention towards him.
Segel and Weaving make for a watchable bickering couple in the film's early scenes. Dan and Lisa are so awful to each other that you can sympathise with their mutual desire to get out of the relationship. They are cruel to each other in a way only a married couple can be. Both feel they have been let down by their other half, that the person they believed they were marrying was simply a fantasy. I'm not sure why, but Weaving is a lot funnier when using her Aussie accent here than in the comedies where she is forced to play an American. Segel's trademark big nebbish routine proves amusing when Dan realises he's out of his depth and his plan goes to hell.
I don't want to ruin a great mid-movie surprise, but some other characters show up at a later point. One of them is played by Timothy Olyphant, who seems to be having a ball with the sort of comic role he's not generally known for. Guilfoyle, a character actor usually associated with serious drama, also has a blast as Dan's disapproving father.
The film's second half enters splatstick territory, with the cabin hosting the sort of comedic bloodshed you might expect from a Sam Raimi movie. Taccone's comedy background proves an asset in setting up gags with hilariously gory punchlines, though one extended bit involving the threat of sexual violence never quite draws the necessary laughs from its bad taste setup.
Over Your Dead Body is a fun romp with some amusing performances and a well-staged mix of action and comedy. It's a rather uninspired script that holds it back from being a potential genre-bending cult classic however. The banter between the duelling leads is never quite sharp enough, and it often feels like Weaving and Segel are working extra hard to mine laughs from some limp dialogue. The movie does such a good job of making us believe that these spouses hate each other's guts that it becomes impossible to buy their second act reconciliation. By the time Dan and Lisa find themselves endangered by a third party, we've grown to hate them so much that it's difficult to care whether they make it out in one or several pieces.
Over Your Dead Body is on Prime Video UK from June 10th.
