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She Dies Tomorrow(2020)

I’ve been watching out for Amy Seimetz since Upstream Colour. The concept seems good, though not too groundbreaking. I’m 20 minutes in, don’t have an opinion yet.



She Dies Tomorrow(2020)

I’ve been watching out for Amy Seimetz since Upstream Colour. The concept seems good, though not too groundbreaking. I’m 20 minutes in, don’t have an opinion yet.
Haven't seen this yet either, but your reasoning and mine are the same! I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.



Haven't seen this yet either, but your reasoning and mine are the same! I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.
Aside from the fact I’ve had a truly awful few days at work, with things falling apart and myself going increasingly mad, it also took me some time to figure out what my thoughts on it were. Usually isn’t the case, so that says something. I’m pretty sure the below constitutes a triple spoiler, so I’ll tag it just in case.

I think this film has a storytelling problem which you really have to be a Nolan-level plotting genius to overcome. It’s not fresh -
WARNING: spoilers below
reminded me of the video to Eminem’s Venom (haven’t seen the Tom Hardy film itself). Btw, I did my best to remember a more legitimate reference, but I can’t think of what that fairly recent sci-fi was called and don’t have enough to go by to search for it meaningfully. It’s all to do with shape-shifting (the sci-if film that evades me) or, if you look at it the other way, a kind of mental virus (more like ‘It Follows’). Without giving any more detail, I felt the storytelling was underwhelming, because it’s a kind of concept that’s very hard to show. It’s a case of creating a problem that you then can’t solve. You can’t have a meaningful event that makes the viewer go, ‘Aha!’ when a behavioural pattern begins to emerge. All it has is people acting weird one after another, their weirdness being vaguely (but not in any coherent way, save for one phrase they all say) connected to the previous person’s experience.
P.S. I promise, this is not a case of revenge for ‘space monkeys’ - I just really wanted to discuss it. It’s possible that I’m becoming too obsessed with showing vs telling in genre films, but I do think it matters. For example, watching ‘Call’ on Netflix now. A very mediocre experience, for sure, but the moment when
WARNING: spoilers below
one character reveals to another she had seen her in the past as a child and that they live in the same house
is framed as pure showing. We’re not told anything whatsoever, but we understand why the character who was a child cries at the realisation. I was hoping for more of that from Seimetz. Carruth, who’s my first association when I think of her, may well be nerdy, but is brilliant at that. ‘Upstream Colour’ was aiming for something vaguely similar, and it even also did it via conversations, but as far as sci-fi goes, in UC you could
WARNING: spoilers below
pinpoint the exact ‘Aha!’ moment when one character appropriates what you already know from earlier in the film is another character’s experience/memory. Same in ‘Primer’ and ‘Coherence’, which both used rehashed conversations to make you think, ‘Wait, she didn’t say that the first around.’
. In short, I don’t know, it felt a bit too soft for me, and not in a good way, like Moorhead & Benson. But it’s definitely worth seeing.



@AgrippinaX

I'm not going to look in the spoiler text until I watch it.

I really, really like Seimetz (and was super disappointed to find out how abusive her relationship with Shane Carruth was/is).

Have you seen her film Sun Don't Shine? (Maybe I already asked you this).



@AgrippinaX

I'm not going to look in the spoiler text until I watch it.

I really, really like Seimetz (and was super disappointed to find out how abusive her relationship with Shane Carruth was/is).

Have you seen her film Sun Don't Shine? (Maybe I already asked you this).
No, you haven’t, and no, I haven’t - thanks for flagging up. I’ll move it up my watch list, because overall, I liked the feeling ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ left me with. It’s just a really odd one.

I was really shocked to read that re Carruth as well, but I think to me he’s always felt like someone who could be abusive, even if I think ‘Primer’ is a work of genius. Anyway, let’s not derail the thread. I look forward to catching up when you’ve watched ‘She Dies Tomorrow’.