Review: In 'Over Your Dead Body,' a couple that plots violent marital separation meets its match
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In the first of several significant flashbacks in “Over Your Dead Body,” Samara Weaving’s unhappy Lisa complains to a friend about a hunting trip her equally miserable husband Dan (Jason Segel) is taking her on.“You know how much I hate guns,” Lisa fumes.
“So dangerous.” Turns out, she’s actually telling two lies, which is par for the course for this twisty yet underwhelming dark comedy that views marriage as both a hyperviolent blood sport and a battle to the death.Based on Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 “The Trip,” “Over Your Dead Body” concerns a couple whose wedded bliss has faded along with their professional prospects.Dan directed a moderately successful sci-fi film several years ago but is now stuck shooting cheesy pop-up ads.
Meanwhile, Lisa’s nascent acting career is flailing.As the movie begins, Dan conspicuously informs his production team that he and his wife are going hiking in the middle of nowhere — something, he insists, the risk-taking Lisa wants to do, despite how perilous that might be.
What we soon realize is that he’s creating cover for his nefarious plan, which is to kill Lisa at his family’s forest cottage, making it look like she disappeared without a trace in the woods.But director Jorma Taccone eventually reveals that it’s not just Dan who has murder on his mind.That first flashback rewinds to Lisa’s simultaneous scheming, claiming to those close to her that Dan longs to go hunting — when, in fact, she’s secretly brought a rifle so that the authorities will assume he accidentally shot himself.
(Whatever fears she once harbored about firearms are, clearly, no longer an issue, if they ever were.) Dan is offended when he uncovers her plot: Why would she want to kill him? At least he’s justified, he believes, having caught Lisa in an affair with her scene partner.More surprises are in store as Dan and ...