STREAMING CINEMA
The Death Cult Overwhelming Us
“She Dies Tomorrow” probes uneasy psyche of nation in crisis
BY STEVE ERICKSON
I hate “movies we need now.” Just a few
years later, does anyone look back fondly
at “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
or other cases of heightened festival
buzz and industry hype?
Amy Seimetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow” isn’t the
movie we need now. It’s something much better:
an accurate mirror of the death cult American
life has become, portraying suicidal nihilism
as a meme. Its accomplishments are as much
formal — especially due to excellent cinematography
and sound design — as thematic. Like
some Japanese fi lms made near the turn of the
century (such as Sion Sono’s “Suicide Circle”
and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure” and “Pulse”), it
captures the spirit of a crumbling society. And
while it was obviously made before COVID, it
feels more like social realism than sci-fi / horror.
“She Dies Tomorrow” was supposed to get
its world premiere at Austin’s SXSW festival in
March. SXSW was canceled for obvious reasons,
and the fi lm has never played a public
screening in a movie theater. Critic Jason Bailey,
who caught a press screening, wrote about
what got lost: “But I hope you get to see it, and I
hope you get to see it in a theater, for a number
of reasons: how the sound design fi lls the auditorium
with downright apocalyptic rumbles;
how an audience of strangers will seek permission
from each other to giggle at the horrifyingly
dark comedy of its back half.”
That audience will have to communicate with
each other online instead.
Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a recovering addict
who has apparently gotten drunk to overcome
her certainty that she will die the next day. It
doesn’t work. She just engages in odd behavior
like playing the beginning of one record over
and over while jumping on the top of the patio
with a leaf-blower. She begs her friend Jane
(Jane Adams) to come over, searching for solace.
Instead, Jane picks up her mood of anxiety
and despair. When Jane goes to a party, everyone
there becomes convinced in turn they will
die tomorrow.
NEON
Kate Lyn Sheil in Amy Seimetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow.” ➤ SHE DIES TOMORROW, continued on p.25
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Bill de Blasio
Mayor
Oxiris Barbot, MD
Commissioner
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