“You would like a document, in writing, about our plan to kill my wife?”
Over Your Dead Body is an absurdly over-the-top, blood-drenched, body-horror black comedy which crackles with energy and is the stage for gleeful mayhem that, in certain spots, veers into sadistic spectacle. It is a funny film, brimming with whip-smart dialogue, a plot that coils in on itself repeatedly, and with performances of engaging characters played by actors working at the top of their games. However, Over Your Dead Body is absolutely not for the squeamish.
“I wish a War upon you!”
“I know, Dad.” Directed by Jorma Taccone off a screenplay by Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, 2026’s Over Your Dead Body is an 87North & XYZ Films-produced, Amazon/IFC distributed, remake of the 2021 Norwegian film, I onde dager (In Evil Days). Jason Segel leads an excellent ensemble cast featuring Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine, and Juliette Lewis.
“You were just going to tell people I wandered off into the woods? Fuck, you are the stupidest person in the world!”
“You make me feel so small, so pathetic! Do you think I need any help with that?”
Dan (Segel) isn’t a happy man. As a filmmaker, he dreams of making features again, but must shoot internet and app ad campaigns to make ends meet. He hates his wife Lisa (Weaving), just hates her, and when not being emasculated by his rancorous relationship with his sour actress-spouse, he finds time to visit his decorated-veteran dad in his assisted-living facility, where his father, Michael (Guilfoyle), relentlessly goads him. Michael measures his milquetoast son through the spectrum of his heroic military experiences and finds Dan wanting.
Getting it coming and going, Dan decides he’s had enough. He’s going to kill Lisa. There’s insurance money to pocket if he can get away with murder, and he has a plan. He’ll take her up to his father’s cabin in the woods and do away with her. Drop her remains in the lake, loaded down with boat rocks. Easy-peasy. The drive from civilization to the cabin confirms his calculations as the conflicted couple can’t get more than a few minutes into the trip without grinding out a virulent proliferation of their petty grudges.
After their arrival at the cabin, Dan does maintenance and upkeep of the building as Lisa activates wine O’clock and tries to get pickled. There’s an emergency report of two escaped prisoners with a hostage on the local news, but Lisa is busy drinking and isn’t listening. Once finished with his chores, he diligently searches for the boat rocks he will need to weigh down Lisa’s remains. He then cooks her what he thinks is her favorite dinner, as he figures a good last meal is just the right thing to do for your spouse before you murder them.
He’s wrong, though; it’s not her favorite meal, that’s Ceviche. When they finish eating, Dan knows it’s go-time. As Lisa rehearses her lines, Dan gets his handkerchief saturated with ether and then fills himself with liquid courage. With his resolve reinforced, he’s ready to strike, but Lisa gets the drop on him. She’s wise to the plan, has been from the start, and watched him grab his boat rocks. She tazes Dan in the chest with a satisfying sizzle, and he drops like a log.
He awakes inches from the barrel of one of his father’s shotguns in Lisa’s irate hands as she interrogates Dan as to the methodology of his plan, forcing him to admit what he had in store for her. A struggle ensues with the couple wrestling over control of the shotgun, during which Lisa stabs Dan in the foot with a butcher knife. As they continue to brawl, the gun goes off, blasting buckshot into the ceiling. A scream rips through the air, and with the snap of ancient wood giving way, the ceiling caves in on Lisa and Dan, knocking them cold.
Looming over the pugilistic pair are Pete (Olyphant) and Todd (Jardine), the two prisoners on the lam from the earlier news report, along with Allegra (Lewis), a C.O. who is smitten with Pete and enabled the escape. They’d been hiding out in the attic until the shotgun blasted through the floorboards and sprayed pellets into Todd’s butt.
Will Dan survive Pete’s predatory gang and manage to kill his wife? Can Lisa rediscover her passion for life in the face of malicious belligerence from both her husband and three dangerous strangers? Can Pete placate Allegra with his promises and keep Todd under control long enough for the trio to extort enough money from the petulant, homicidal mates for a clean getaway? If you have a strong enough stomach, see Over Your Dead Body to find out.
“It’s time for goodbye, Dan.”
“No, Lisa, it’s hammer-time!”
There is a lot to like in Over Your Dead Body. Across the board, the performances are entertaining. Timothy Olyphant is effortlessly charming, even when playing a glib serial killer. Guilfoyle’s Michael radiates disappointment with everyone he encounters, and Keith Jardine’s Todd is appropriately terrifying as well as displaying an almost cartoonish level of resilience to traumatizing injury during the breadth of the picture. Samara Weaving is wonderful; Her Lisa has every reason to be a hard-ass, and Weaving plays it to the hilt. She nails her character’s arc. Jason Segel’s Dan is an unsympathetic, homicidal goober, a dimwitted goon, but it’s a credit to the actor that he is able to pull off a proper face-turn and get the audience on his side. There’s not a lot new from Juliette Lewis, whose performance of Allegra is very evocative of Mallory Knox, the character she played in the 1994 Oliver Stone film, Natural Born Killers.
Exteriors shot in Finland are expansive, cold, forested snowscapes and misty, grey lakes, while the interiors of Michael’s cabin are appropriately claustrophobic, including the supply cellar where many of the pictures’ myriad brutalities take place.
The dialogue is tremendous. Snark and venom drip from almost every word as the players nimbly fence and spar with their lines. An amazing scene where Dan and Lisa are acting out their alibis in a dialogue duel is a mega multi-meta-moment. It’s a show-stopping display of amazing acting, but is later obscured by relentless layers of blood, gore, guts, and body-horror.
The script takes a one-step-forward, two-steps-back approach with looping timelines but keeps things very clear for viewers to follow with the clever use of title cards keeping temporal track of events as well as the repeated use of the catchphrase, “Wakey-wakey!” as the narrative reboots.
There is a rape scene that is (mostly) played for laughs, but may be the point where non-genre audiences have enough and ask for the check. The level of violence in Over Your Dead Body is quite ridiculous. The prop team went above and beyond the call of duty, creating ultra-realistic prosthetics graphically depicting dripping red viscera, guts, crushed bones, severed fingers, and brains. There was really only one thing that this reviewer was particularly bothered by (beyond the rape scene) during the runtime of Over Your Dead Body: After Lisa stabs Dan in the foot with the butcher knife, the movie completely forgets about it.
He doesn’t bandage it. He runs on it without a limp. The cat-and-mouse game that occurs towards the end of the movie wouldn’t work in the slightest because every step Dan took would be marked by a bloody footprint, but it isn’t. This reviewer has just recovered from foot surgery and once had the misfortune of dropping a butcher knife into his foot, resulting in an immediate emergency room adventure as well as several stitches. He can say unequivocally that Dan’s late film feats wouldn’t be possible on injured feet.
That continuity issue notwithstanding, Over Your Dead Body is a very well-crafted, funny film and a good representation of the action-splatter-comedy genre exemplified by recent films like Nobody and Novocaine, albeit with more embellished squick and a dash of sadism.
Over Your Dead Body opens in theatres 4/24/2026.
Newsdesk