She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Amy just bought a house. Amy is young. Amy is cute. Amy has a life to live. Amy should be excited. But our first shot of Amy is actually an extreme close-up of her eye, a vibrant hue of blue amidst black, smudgy mascara and bedewed with tears. She wanders slowly around her new house, drinks a lot, and has Mozart's "Lacrimosa" on repeat. Is she in quarantine like the rest of us? Well, yes. But not because of a viral pandemic in the film. This is apparently self-imposed, though there are suggestions otherwise. First, unlikely colored lights attract her to one room in particular. Second, as she approaches, staring out of the screen and into our eyes, we cannot tell what she's thinking. And, of course, there's her confession -- prediction? assertion? affirmation? intention? declaration? -- that she is going to die tomorrow. Amy is not well.

When Jane calls to congratulate Amy on her new house, Amy is dismissive and absent. Despite needing to go to a birthday party for her sister-in-law, Jane hurries over to check on her friend. Amy's morbidity has led her to search for urns online; it has also led to her looking at leather jackets. After she dies tomorrow, Amy tells Jane, she wants to be turned into a leather jacket, so she can be useful. Disturbed, Jane returns home and then goes to the party, carrying something of Amy's state of mind with her. It's not sorrow, exactly, or fear, or any other distinct emotion. It's more like a cold assertion, a harsh reality with which the subject is attempting to make peace or at least to accept. But it's catching.

Writer and director Amy Seimetz -- whose protagonist's name might suggest a frighteningly personal basis for this movie -- has crafted a movie about life that consistently rejects liveliness. Or at least any conventions of cinematic life. Almost inert, the film feels fragmented, stitched together like a Frankenstein monster with large episodes and oddball shots of microscopic cells, sunsets, and more abstract color-heavy images. There is no exposition, except in shorthand as scenes unravel and we see Amy (and, eventually, others) reveal their symptoms to others. Nobody likes to hear their friend, family member, patient, co-worker, passenger, client, or lover is going to die tomorrow, as if that was something any of us could even say. In that awkward conversation, which repeats uncomfortably in this movie, they laugh it off, sweetly deny it, get angry or afraid, express concern about sanity, and generally fail to comprehend until it is too late for themselves.

She Dies Tomorrow is not even typical arthouse fare. Don't let its starry cast fool you; this is a difficult watch, both due to its content and its delivery. Seimetz exerts incredible control over the film, keeping our attention on what plot exists while forcing our minds to metaphoric "what if" considerations. She shifts her storytelling between time and place, keeping us unsure even as we slowly realize what exactly is happening. It helps that cinematographer Jay Keitel's shots are often unexpected, moving to alarming perspectives that highlight disorientation in the screenplay and in the characters' lives. Deaths. Whatever.

In this way, it's a nearly perfect movie for isolating during a pandemic. Which is to say, it's a terrible movie to watch right now. An overpowering sense of doom compels the film, and it only gets worse as the contagious awareness of death spreads. Of course, there is also real death, which satisfies the horror fiend wanting entertainment even as it increases viewing anxiety in general; this contagion may be less visceral than COVID-19, but it is far more insidious as a disease of the mind. Though we know precious little about these characters, we are them in more ways than one. As they, one by one, gaze into the brightly colored lights like Amy did, they respond in as various ways to their own death as they did to news of hers. Is it fear spreading, or is it something far worse?

While watching, I thought of everything from The Happening to The Neon Demon, but ultimately this movie feels, to me, like the love child of It Follows and Melancholia. An unbearable, looming comprehension of death elicits strange responses from people. But, as we've learned over the past year, collectivity isn't the experience we ultimately undergo. We'll face death on our own, in the end.