Not every film’s priority is to entertain its audience. In some cases, filmmakers strive for something entirely different. Perhaps they want to terrify their audience, move them emotionally, or in some cases, try something slightly more unique. Rather than strive for a certain emotion they want to elicit or tell a conventionally structured narrative, some directors will go in another direction, telling a more surreal story using less typical filmmaking techniques. Sometimes, this works. Other times, like with Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow, it doesn’t at all, and you start to wish that they just went down a slightly more standard route.
She Dies Tomorrow starts strongly. We meet Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), a young woman who’s convinced that she’s going to die tomorrow. It’s an incredibly compelling premise, how exactly does one spend their final day alive? I’m sure it’s a thought that’s passed through the minds of most people, but unfortunately, Seimetz doesn’t seem particularly interested in her film’s own plot. Rather than explore this in an interesting way, the film chooses to instead spend its runtime bathing in its own “vibes”. The cinematography and lighting frequently combine to make some gorgeous visuals, but for the most part, they’re incredibly shallow shots that tell us nothing. A quick investigation on the internet tells me that the film is meant to be a psychological thriller, but there’s nothing thrilling about it.
There’s a brilliant existential thriller in here somewhere, but as it is, this is a film that will struggle to stay in your memory, let alone keep you awake at night.
The film seems to want to convey a certain sense of anxiety to the viewer, trapping them in the headspace of someone who doesn’t just think they’re going to die tomorrow but knows for definite. It’s an admirable goal, but one it fails to achieve. Rather than generate any genuinely anxious moments, the film instead quickly becomes a repetitive slog, with every scene feeling even more elongated and dull than the last one. What especially doesn’t help this is the film’s disregard for its character, as it struggles to focus on any of its ensemble cast and develop any of them, meaning that these frankly boring scenes of, for example, Amy staring into the camera, just feels frustrating and pointless. There’s simply no reason to care about what’s going on. That would be fine if the film could fill that void with something else, like if it managed to actually generate some anxiety inside of me, but it fails on that front as well, resulting in an incredibly cold experience.
As She Dies Tomorrow plays out, we jump around from character to character, as more and more of them come to the realisation that they are also going to die tomorrow. Again, on paper, it’s quite interesting, seeing different people’s perspectives as they come to realise what awaits them, but in execution, it ranges from underwhelming to flat-out laughable. The realisation scenes themselves are shot in perhaps the dullest and unimaginative way possible, failing to at all tap into the potential anxiety of the moment. This underwhelming execution plagues the entire film, as almost every conversation feels like it’s in dire need of some fleshing out, and every scene feels like it needs that extra spark of imagination to successfully generate the anxiety and existentialism it wants its viewers to feel.
What we’re ultimately left with is an emotionless, underwhelming film that manages to make 84 minutes feel like a lifetime. It’s obvious that with She Dies Tomorrow, Amy Seimetz wanted to make something unconventional that strays away from the norm, but unfortunately, this is a step in the wrong direction. It takes an incredibly promising premise but fails to execute it well at all, with the end product just feeling half-baked. There’s a brilliant existential thriller in here somewhere, but as it is, this is a film that will struggle to stay in your memory, let alone keep you awake at night.
She Dies Tomorrow is out now on Radiance Films Blu-Ray
Tom’s Archive: She Dies Tomorrow
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