{"id":479044,"date":"2026-06-15T21:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/479044\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T21:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:57:11","slug":"over-your-dead-body-review-disappointing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/479044\/","title":{"rendered":"Over Your Dead Body review \u2014 ‘Disappointing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unhappily married couple Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) go for a weekend away at a remote cabin \u2014 but rather than patching things up, they both enact plans to murder each other.<\/p>\n

With The Lonely Island\u2019s Jorma Taccone (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping<\/a>) in the director\u2019s chair,\u00a0Over Your Dead Body<\/a>\u00a0is a gruesome, darkly comedic depiction of spouses who decide to skip couples therapy to deal with their marital issues and go straight to homicide instead. Jason Segel plays Dan,\u00a0an antsy, uninspired\u00a0director\u00a0helming adverts and short-form content rather than, as he once did, feature films.\u00a0With his marriage to\u00a0aspiring actor wife Lisa (Samara Weaving,\u202ftruly one of our greatest on-screen screamers)\u00a0on the rocks,\u00a0he whisks her away to his father\u2019s cabin in the woods,\u00a0where they eat steak, play\u00a0the world\u2019s most annoying\u00a0game of\u00a0Scrabble, and bicker\u00a0constantly.<\/p>\n

\"Over<\/p>\n

But when he approaches her from behind, chloroform in hand, ready to knock her out before\u00a0knocking\u00a0her off\u00a0(in order to\u00a0claim her life-insurance money and finally be free of her belittlement), he gets a surprise\u2014\u00a0she was planning the exact same thing. They come clean about their bloody intentions, battling it out over whose crocodile tears would be most convincing to police, when some surprise visitors to the cabin leave them fighting for their lives in entirely\u00a0different ways.<\/p>\n

Weaving is one of the best\u00a0Final\u00a0Girls in the business…<\/p>\n

A remake of Thrash<\/a> writer-director Tommy Wirkola\u2019s 2021 Norwegian film\u00a0The Trip, this is a very starry affair\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Segel is a modern comedy icon, Weaving is one of the best\u00a0Final\u00a0Girls in the business, and they\u2019re later joined by Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis, both on twisted, villainous form. As such,\u00a0Over Your Dead Body\u00a0is always watchable, especially in the scathing back-and-forths\u00a0between Dan and Lisa. The core dynamic between them is the most interesting element here, even if their problems (cheating, debt, lack of respect for each other\u2019s creative\u00a0endeavours) feel generic and under-explored.<\/p>\n

Once the rest of the ensemble\u00a0join\u00a0the party, though, the film switches gears, and moves into far more hyperbolic and graphic territory. The violence is intense and\u00a0stylised\u00a0but often feels unnecessary, and its shock value is totally negated by the\u00a0understated reactions of the characters.\u00a0There\u2019s\u00a0also a nasty edge to its approach to sexual violence, which, instead of feeling jokey or subversive, simply leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It all adds up to a second half that feels\u00a0like\u00a0a totally different\u00a0movie\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0one\u00a0the set-up promised, full of incidents\u00a0the script\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0give us\u00a0nearly enough\u00a0to care about, all of which unspool to a disappointing finale.<\/p>\n

A stellar cast, a few laughs and some stylish filmmaking can\u2019t quite make up for Over Your Dead Body\u2019s lack of dimension and off-putting tone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unhappily married couple Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) go for a weekend away at a remote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-479044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}