'Over Your Dead Body' Has Two Tonal Lanes and Coasts In The Middle

Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) are married. Hold your applause because that’s where the celebrations end. Professionally, they are not in the best position. Dan is a director who had modest success with his film years ago, but that’s all in the past. He’s mostly resigned to working on TV commercials, wanting to be anywhere else in the world. Lisa, well, she’s an actress, and Hollywood hasn’t exactly broken down her door as of late. They have both amassed quite a large amount of debt because Lisa has been paving the way for Dan’s boulevard of broken dreams.

What’s a couple on the edge to do? Counseling? Bankruptcy? Divorce? Nope. A nice, quiet trip up to a beautiful cabin might be the cure that ails them. But we are beyond the point of reconciliation because Dan and Lisa are both planning to kill the other person. Yup, that’s right. Jorma Taccone’s “Over Your Dead Body,” a remake of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 “The Trip,” pokes fun at the main characters’ naive plans. Dan tells everyone who will listen that Lisa is adamant about hiking up the mountain, even in the face of a snow threat. On the flipside, Lisa tells a friend that Dan is eager to go on a hunting trip. An accidental gun firing and a possible avalanche trapping someone are the Netflix-true-crime-esque ideas they both settled on for one another.

Samara Weaving in Jorma Taccone’s OVER YOUR DEAD BODY. Courtesy of Antti Rastivo. An Independent Film Company Release

Announcing these plans in this manner is rather suspicious, but the married couple can only see freedom and an insurance claim payout on the horizon. Taccone and co-writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney have the most fun when the premise has Segel and Weaving at the center of it. Once Dan and Lisa find out what the other is up to, it’s funny to see how they try to one-up one another. Neither of them is particularly skilled in the art of assassination, and having a consortium of weapons at their disposal doesn’t make up for that fact. Segel and Weaving take the faceoff as far as it can go, until three unaccounted-for elements get thrown into the fray.

Juliette Lewis, Samara Weaving, and Timothy Olyphant in Jorma Taccone’s OVER YOUR DEAD BODY. Courtesy of Independent Film Company. An Independent Film Company Release.

It just so happens that two convicts on the run, Todd (Keith Jardine) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant), and the correctional officer who set them free, Allegra (Juliette Lewis), are hauled up to the cabin as a hideout spot. The three are not so eager to share space with Dan and Lisa, and subject them to interrogation and torture. It’s with their introduction that Taccone’s reimaging of “The Trip” is almost unsure of where to go next. The absurdity of the premise is the point. It would have probably been a whole lot easier and less bloody if Dan and Lisa had separated. Dan doesn’t even know what Lisa’s favorite food is (does he even care at this point?) In their hour of discontent, they have to work together to stave off another couple and their strongman bodyguard. The irony is palpable. But “Over Your Dead Body” struggles to know when it wants to keep the laughs going or venture into darker territory.

To quote Deftones’s 2010 single, “Rocket Skates,” the second half of the film is “guns, razors, knives,” a lawnmower, and everything else you can think of used as a weapon that would make late wrestling hardcore legend Terry Funk blush. “Over Your Dead Body” becomes less of a dark comedic fantasy of a couple at the brink and more of a brutal, all-out war of survival that tries to play excessive injuries and a prison rape scenario for giggles. You almost forget the origin of the story entirely – immediately wondering how each character is going to live through this amount of blood loss and body trauma. It’s Mortal Kombat without a tournament or a world to save, as the reason why we’re here drifts more and more to the background.