Death Warmed Up

Indie king Jim Jarmusch turns his wry eye to flesh-eaters in the all-star comedy-horror The Dead Don’t Die. James Mottram meets the man who makes zombies look cool.

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“It’s really Tilda Swinton’s fault. Let’s blame her,” muses Jim Jarmusch about his new zombie comedy, The Dead Don’t Die. The kernel for it came after Jarmusch made his 2013 vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive, with Swinton. “For a few years after that, Tilda was always saying, ‘When are you going to make the zombie film?’” Trouble is Jarmusch – as well versed as he is in horror classics – was not a fan of the undead.

“Among horror films, zombies are my least favourite. I’ve never seen The Walking Dead, for example. So I’m not a zombie guy. I’m more of a vampire guy… vampires are so sophisticated and elegant and sexual in a way. And they can change into a bat or a wolf, and they’re highly intelligent. Zombies are just dumb-ass vessels, walking around. They’re just stupid entities. They’re just the undead coming back.”

Nevertheless, after Swinton’s pestering, Jarmusch decided to script The Dead Don’t Die, a typically droll tale set in a small American town called Centerville. After “polar fracking” leads the Earth to spin off its axis, suddenly the undead are rising from their graves. Moreover, they’re all gravitating towards what they once loved – Chardonnay, Wi-Fi and coffee among other things – not to mention sating their lust for flesh.