Everyone has that moment in life when their own death stops being an abstract idea and instead becomes something much more immediate and tangible. You go from thinking "I'm going to die some day" to "Holy crap, I'm actually going to die some day!" My dad's death made me think a lot about it. I saw the actual process of death and I started picturing myself in the same bed, going through the same process.
But most people are able to get on with their lives despite knowing that those lives are going to someday end. You might think about it occasionally but you're then able to put the thought away and think about other things. But what about those who can't put the thought away? What about those who can't get past it? What about those who can't figure out how to possibly go about enjoying the time they have because they're so worried about it coming to an end? That's the feeling "She Dies Tomorrow" captures, and it captures it quite well.
And anyone who's ever struggled with some degree of anxiety knows that it could be anything. In this movie it happens to be death. But some other person might be obsessed with throwing up in public, or overwhelmed with repairs needed for their house, or any number of other things that seem silly and mundane and crazy to anyone who isn't obsessed with those things. But those things don't seem silly to the person experiencing the anxiety. Or rather, the person may know on some level that their worries are silly and disproportionate to the things they're worried about, but knowing that doesn't make the worry go away.
A year of global pandemic has I think made us all think about mortality a bit more than we normally would, and "She Dies Tomorrow" feels like a logical product of such a supremely anxious time. It requires some patience; it has that slow, droning quality that's really popular in the pseudo-horror genre these days, and which has made me despise some other recent examples of it ("Relic," "Possessor," "Mandy," "Color Out of Space"). But this is much better than any of those movies and rewards its audience much more for the patience they invest in it.
As someone who does have an anxious nature and tends to worry about stupid stuff, much of which is completely out of my control anyway, I found this movie to be weirdly comforting, because writer/director Amy Seimetz must have some experience with the same thing if she wanted to make this movie in the first place, and must have thought it was worth making because she believed there was a large enough audience of others who would understand and want to see it too.
Grade: A-
But most people are able to get on with their lives despite knowing that those lives are going to someday end. You might think about it occasionally but you're then able to put the thought away and think about other things. But what about those who can't put the thought away? What about those who can't get past it? What about those who can't figure out how to possibly go about enjoying the time they have because they're so worried about it coming to an end? That's the feeling "She Dies Tomorrow" captures, and it captures it quite well.
And anyone who's ever struggled with some degree of anxiety knows that it could be anything. In this movie it happens to be death. But some other person might be obsessed with throwing up in public, or overwhelmed with repairs needed for their house, or any number of other things that seem silly and mundane and crazy to anyone who isn't obsessed with those things. But those things don't seem silly to the person experiencing the anxiety. Or rather, the person may know on some level that their worries are silly and disproportionate to the things they're worried about, but knowing that doesn't make the worry go away.
A year of global pandemic has I think made us all think about mortality a bit more than we normally would, and "She Dies Tomorrow" feels like a logical product of such a supremely anxious time. It requires some patience; it has that slow, droning quality that's really popular in the pseudo-horror genre these days, and which has made me despise some other recent examples of it ("Relic," "Possessor," "Mandy," "Color Out of Space"). But this is much better than any of those movies and rewards its audience much more for the patience they invest in it.
As someone who does have an anxious nature and tends to worry about stupid stuff, much of which is completely out of my control anyway, I found this movie to be weirdly comforting, because writer/director Amy Seimetz must have some experience with the same thing if she wanted to make this movie in the first place, and must have thought it was worth making because she believed there was a large enough audience of others who would understand and want to see it too.
Grade: A-