
A sci-fi road trip sourly messes up and brings out sorrow in ‘We’re All Gonna Die‘, the naked premise is applaudable with potential. Freddie Wong’s and Matthew Arnold’s performance at times does shine but as writers and directors they lose grip over the emotional aspects of the film, making its subtext odd.
It’s been twelve years, and after almost fifteen hundred jumps which as such secures the film somewhere after the year 2036 a colossal alien ‘spike’ has crash-landed on the planet and is hopping around the globe. The situation however is odd; this technology at least for some reason all of a sudden seems to remain stagnant and mass violence and deaths have gotten so out of hand that it is now considered normal.
While Thalia the beekeeper (Ashly Burch) goes about her day with her chores, her mother together with the mother of her husband feels the loss of a daughter and a husband and the gap is something she seems to ignore, and as pure green grass on their gravestones remains unkempt. With the huge icicle still to be seen, she goes for an essential honey load that she is to deliver by a truck that is to help her with some of her burgeoning debts, on the way she runs into rather literally a close friend in the form of EMT Kai (Jordan Rodrigues) who is trying to dull the pain from the loss of a close friend while in his rusting sports car.
As soon as their collision-cum-introduction develops into the third phase, this Tangled is met with an astounding twist thanks to Thalia’s bees and Kai’s Sports car which is teleported to another location, forcing them in this way to join hands and retrieve the car which in turn aids them to resolve their inner disputes.
Unfortunately, issues with the narrative’s structure soon become very clear. Despite a few instances in the film where the characters have to remain silent which implies some connection to the context – for example, in a more comic sense when Thalia gets upset that she feels turned on by Kai’s muscular calves then their conversations seem uninteresting which leads to scenes that are too static and unevenly paced. This quite pronounced inability to buy into the plot extends to the comedy side of the film too; except for a couple of sassy moments (such as Thalia attempting to control her imagination of sexy calves), most of the clearly sexual comedy comes from not the actors’ weird personalities and interactions but their weird and funny comments and such that were a more commonplace blend between them.
The insults hurled by the couple set the tone for how viewers of the show would understand the complex romantic relationship between them in the first place, however, this gentle ribbing is not often visibly restrained, even when the protagonists themselves are forced to think of several strategies to bygone relations. They get to such an extent that people who are not significantly involved in the actions anymore usually this is undemanding, normal, very human, and individuals afflicted by their own difficulties and who are dispersed to every facet of their sharp words, which further contributes to horrid attitude with growing insults.
The film plot has been discussed and worked through to such a great depth that they remain poor for the length of time before returning furnished with features quite different from those that had been previously seen, but more importantly the emotional attachments. However, this dizzying rapid travel of the spike is another moving metaphor, a metaphor which is too malleable and distant from the characters so it should sound as background to them.
Science fiction deals with loss from a very nuanced perspective, be it Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, or Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. However, “We’re All Gonna Die” faces loss as more of being a quintessential aspect of life, saying it possesses no significance. rather it is a fusion of genres that tries to shine light upon post-COVID society and the changes it underwent during the pandemic. Although loss is the central theme of the movie, some experiences have the potential to crush anyone regardless of how deeply affected one is, portraying an immense potential ripple effect.
As compared to the rest of the film, Burch, Rodrigues, and the performers bring in the needed balance and emotional depth to the film, their dreamlike warmth and grand lighting make the setting surreal. They make a valiant effort to combat the sheer scale of loss experienced by their society. But the movie portrays many such instances for the viewers. So, when we talk about “We’re All Gonna Die,” it holds a certain extent of absurd tragic relevance which might come off as shocking to its viewers.
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