Jorma Taccone’s remake of Tommy Wirkola’s The Trip switches up the tone (less dark, more snark), but delivers plenty of gore gags and snappy one-liners in this slick, blood-splattered crowd-pleaser with standout comedy turns from Samara Weaving and Jason Segal.
★★★½
A marriage on the brink, a remote cabin, and a couple arriving each with the other’s murder already planned. Over Your Dead Body sets its darkly funny scenario early, then keeps complicating it until it plays like a farce with a body count.
This is an English-language remake of Tommy Wirkola’s The Trip (available on Netflix, as director Jorma Taccone gamely kept recommending to us in the Q&A), and the tonal shift is obvious. Wirkola’s original is sour and vindictive, driven by mutual contempt. Taccone smooths that down. Jason Segel and Samara Weaving still play a couple at war, but thanks to some script tweaks and the actors’ sure touch there is still something loveable about each of them. That gives the film a lighter step, but less edge.
The result is an enjoyably flippant comedy that carries the influence of post-Pulp Fiction crime flicks, using flashbacks and record-scratch reveals for coming reveals and destabilising complications. The result is a gleefully nasty crowd-pleaser that keeps the audience on their toes.
The action is scrappy and blunt, slapstick brawls that feel enjoyably slightly out of control, with sudden unexpected gore gags that elicited roars of delight from my up-for-it crowd.
At the centre, Samara Weaving is allowed to let loose with her natural accent and embrace her inner brat. Segel, pushing against his usual persona, finds a vein of pettiness that suits the material, even if the script stops short of letting him become truly unpleasant. That said, be warned: his character is on the receiving end of a sexual assault sequence that – like the violence – is played for laughs but lingers too long, derailing the film’s tone before it recovers.
The supporting cast, including Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis as another couple on the run, function as disruptions, entering just as things threaten to settle and knocking the film off course.
Sure, Over Your Dead Body doesn’t match the nasty bite of Wirkola’s original. That film’s vicious cruelty has a sting this version often sidesteps. Still, it is violent, playful, and consistently entertaining. Taccone has taken something that was bleak enough to be an acquired taste, and turned it into a big crowd-pleaser that kept the room laughing while the bodies hit the floor.
Over Your Dead Body played at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans, ahead of a wide release in US cinemas on 24 April.
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