Review: ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ crashes the conversation on collective mortality

Everything that’s living is dying. And yet death somehow remains a taboo discussion topic. “We’re all gonna die. I just think we should be able to talk about it,” Jane Adams says, pointblank. Her character, also named Jane, crashes the birthday party of her sister-in-law Susan (Katie Aselton), wearing her floral pajamas and waving a bloody, bandaged hand. She’s just been confronted with the inevitability of her own demise by close friend Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), and she is so disheveled that her mind literally can’t focus on anything else. She Dies Tomorrow, written and directed by Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine), scrawls a poetic and brutal thesis on our collecting dying, evoking a similar emotional response as David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, but squares up harder-coated conversations on death, wasting one’s life, and infectious hysteria.

When Jane expresses such deep concern that she’s gonna die tomorrow, Susan quickly swerves the conversation back to dolphin fucking (no, literally) and brushes her off as simply crazy. Jane’s brother Jason (Chris Messina) laughs nervously, and the other guests ⏤ Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim) ⏤ simply look on, unsure of what to make of it. The party soon disperses; Jane back to her home, where she meets death face-to-face, resembled through flashing red, green, and blue neons (“is this how it ends?” she asks an unseen presence), and everyone else to the rest of their evening. As if contracting some airborne virus, Jason, Susan, Tilly, and Brian quickly contend with their own mortality ⏤ Seimetz toys with the idea that death, or rather the knowing, spreads like an apocalyptic contagion. Once each character is burdened with such knowledge, the emotional beats unfold with crushing force. Even Susan, once vivacious and of stern temperament, devolves into a manic mess. These revelations punctuate the whole notion that absolutely everyone is afraid to die.

Before the film’s conception, Seimetz, whom genre fans will also know for roles in Pet Semetery (2019) and Alien: Covenant, had been struggling with her own anxiety and “found I was spreading my panic to other people by talking about it perhaps too excessively,” she remarks in press materials. Couple her inner battles with a constant influx of headlines and deaths of her father and friends, She Dies Tomorrow bottles up an intensely personal narrative, wraps it around a Dario Argento style, and casts a hypnotic, inescapable incantation on us all.

One of life’s greatest uncertainties, death eludes the comprehension of top scientists and other great thinkers. Sure, there are countless stories of people who claim they’ve had near-death experiences and have witnessed either a bright light spiraling at the end of a tunnel or their souls floating outside of their bodies, but what comes next is truly unknown. It’s a frontier none of us could possibly understand and one into which we all shall eventually pass. It’s that uncertainty that is so terrifying. Well, next to everything we’ve ever known and loved crumbling back into dust, as if all of this had been just an illusion.

When Amy is in her final moments, she teeters on the edge between denial and resignation. “I’m ready,” she squeaks. And she falls backward and out of the camera’s view. Around her, the landscape is desolate, grey, and rocky. She’s alone ⏤ and we’re all truly alone when we die. As much of we have friends, family, and lovers to support us and bring joy in this life, death is a solitary transformation. The camera hangs on this moment, a haunting static shot, before Amy pops back into view, obviously still rattled and emotional. “I’m not okay,” she blubbers. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay.” It is that dichotomy we all carry around with us. Are any of us really OK or ready for death?

She Dies Tomorrow is far less concerned with narrative as it is a visual treatise, banking hard on illustrating a point. My father died in 2014, and days before he passed, I had one last conversation with him (actually, he couldn’t speak, as he suffered from the crippling ALS), so I was able to express all I wanted and needed to say. As I write this review, 24 hours after experiencing the film, I wonder what thoughts must have thrashing around in his head: knowing he was going to die and being absolutely paralyzed to stop it. What did he recall most about his life? What memories came to him? And did he have any gnawing regrets?

Seimetz also deals handily in regrets. In one almost dream-like sequence, Amy recalls a conversation with a relatively new lover named Craig (Kentucker Audley) when she’s just moved into her new place. Craig asks Amy if she has any regrets. She fumbles for an answer, at first, but upon a bit of reflection, she confides that she perhaps regrets having an abortion when she was 22. The house has brought up a lot of feelings and made her reflect on that decision and her younger self. Would she have done it all differently? Maybe. Maybe not. Her visceral reaction to such a question is moving and perhaps a little telling. People always say they don’t have any regrets, but what She Dies Tomorrow addresses, as well, is how much we all take for granted and that deep-chested sorrow we could feel upon our death. Once Amy knows she’s dying tomorrow, she begins caressing the hardwood floor, a splintered piece of wood, stalks of flowers from her garden, and handfuls of autumn leaves. She builds a fire in her backyard and soaks in its unforgettable glow and warmth. Those sensations appear minor, but in truth, life is in the details.

“I love trees. I’m going to miss them,” Sky (Michelle Rodriquez) tells Erin (Olivia Taylor Dudley), noticing the wind gently jostling a cluster of trees lining her backyard. It’s one of the film’s final scenes, and the vibrant, lively colors stand in contrast to the dreariness overlaying the otherwise unremarkable conversation. While Jane is busy coddling an inflatable flamingo in the pool, someone starts up their lawn mower in a nearby yard. “Who’s mowing their lawn right now?” says Erin, to nobody in particular. It’s a scoffing inquiry, and those six words further underline the film’s message.

Everything seems inconsequential when you’re about to die, but She Dies Tomorrow reminds the viewer that every single little moment and every single little choice in life means something. Because all we really have in the end is the life we did or did not live.

She Dies Tomorrow hits VOD this Friday (August 7).

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