Over Your Dead Body is a wild, violent, and hilarious romp

Over Your Dead Body - Courtesy of IFC

Every couple has arguments. Married couples certainly fight. In the case of Over Your Dead Body, however, a married couple is ready to kill each other, literally. They're at the breaking point, and every little thing the other does becomes grating and annoying. Yet, they're suddenly forced to work together after convicts bust into their remote cabin and pose a new threat. This makes for a hilarious time at the movies, with laugh-out-loud performances by Samara Weaving and Jason Segel.

Directed by Jorma Taccone, Over Your Dead Body is a remake of the Norwegian film The Trip. In this version, Weaving plays Lisa, an aspiring actress, and Segel plays Dan, a filmmaker who only has one indie film credit to his name, released eight years ago. Since then, he's made commercials, or as Lisa refers to them, "pop-up ads." Within ten minutes, it's clear Dan wants to take Lisa to the cabin because he plans to kill her. We see the rope and duct tape in the trunk of his clunker of a car. On the drive there, everything they do grinds the other's nerves. He can't stand Lisa's British accent. She detests his music choices. At one point, after Lisa foils Dan's plan and ties him to a chair, the two bicker back and forth, hurling insults at each other. In this scene especially, it's evident that Weaving and Segel had a hell of a lot of fun in their roles, trying to one-up and roast each other.

The film shifts focus by the halfway point when convicts crash through the top floor and land on Dan and Lisa, who, at that point, fight over a shotgun and who'll pull the trigger first. Timothy Olyphant plays Pete, Keith Jardine plays the burly and imposing Todd, and Juliette Lewis stars as Allegra, a prison guard who helped Todd and Pete escape because she loves Pete, and boy, do they have quite the twisted relationship. Because of this new and sudden plot thread, Dan and Lisa come together to defeat the convicts.

Not only are Weaving and Segel great, delivering some real comedic gold here, but so are Olyphant, Jardine, and Lewis especially. It's evident that everyone had fun shooting this movie, and Lewis is always a delight to watch. She plays such weird characters, and that's the case with her prison guard. Allegra is sadistic one moment and then overly needy regarding her relationship with Pete the next. She can be frightening and ridiculous just within a single scene.

The second half of the film gets bloody as hell. Characters are stabbed in the foot or hand. Heads are blown off with a shotgun. Nearly every kitchen utensil becomes a weapon. The level of gore just reflects the absurdity of the premise, especially once the convicts show up and alter the narrative. Yet, the film works best when it boils down to an examination of relationships, including how tough it is to remain married. As the runtime hurls forward in all of its bloody glory, we learn more about Dan and Lisa, including the crushing debt and deferred dreams weighing down their marriage. However, when they openly confront those issues, sometimes at gunpoint, they realize they're a team and their survival, literally and figuratively, depends upon that. There's some real heart to this movie.

Over Your Dead Body makes for a great time at the movies. Weaving and Segel give standout performances as a couple who initially hate each other before they realize they're a team and their survival depends upon mending their relationship. The film contains plenty of laughs and lots of bloodshed, but also a deeper reflection on the challenges of a relationship. It works best when it stays grounded in that.

Over Your Dead Body opens in theaters this weekend.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGxKTIegUZ4