More and more bitterly evil films are coming from Scandinavia. But when such ice-cold successes are reissued in the USA, it rarely ends well. Liam Neeson was only half as nasty in “Hard Powder” as Stellan Skarsgård in “One by One” – and only trace elements of the breathtaking border crossings in the Danish “Speak No Evil” were found in the Hollywood remake of the same name with James McAvoy. None of this necessarily gave hope for “Over Your Dead Body,” which was released directly on Amazon Prime Video in Germany. In the same year that the Norwegian-Finnish comedy “The Trip – A Murderous Weekend” from 2021 was released, a decision was made to remake it for the US market.
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“Dead Snow” director Tommy Wirkola was supposed to direct the remake after the original, but was only involved as an executive producer. Instead, Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”) took over the direction. The film was shot again at locations in the Finnish provinces – and for a long time you look in vain for any real innovations. But then a completely uninhibited 90s star brings anarchic madness to the pitch-black comedy – and in doing so even overshadows the original, which seems almost civilized in comparison!
Married couple Dan (Jason Segel) and Lisa (Samara Weaving) came up with the same deadly idea at the same time!
Commercial filmmaker Dan (Jason Segel), frustrated with his job, spends a weekend with his wife Lisa (Samara Weaving), an unsuccessful actress. Officially, the time out in a small cabin by the lake is supposed to get the relationship back on track. However, Dan secretly plans to kill his wife and collect the life insurance. What he doesn’t know: Lisa is pursuing exactly the same plan!
Just as the murderous brawlers are really at loggerheads, a trio of crooks who had previously been hiding unnoticed in the hut appear. The clever Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and his infantile friend Todd (Keith Jardine) managed to escape from prison with the support of the simple-minded warden Allegra (greatly blunt: Juliette Lewis). Now they suspect that the quarreling couple has great prey…
A gender swap that pays off!
While in “The Trip” three (male) escaped convicts seriously disrupted the already shaky house blessing, here Juliette Lewis, who is already a fan of idiosyncratic characters, provides a refreshingly spoiled spin. With a performance that is as snotty as it is unpretentious, the former teen star from “Cape of Fear” and “From Dusk Till Dawn” relishes all notions of female etiquette. As a stupid and horny prison guard, she allows her crush Pete to please her shortly after arriving at the hut, before pursuing another natural need in the hiding place in the attic under the gaze of the two convicts.
Especially with her anarchic figure, which makes “Ready Or Not” scream queen Samara Weaving and sitcom superstar Jason Segel (“How I Met Your Mother”) look like dignified bores, it becomes clear: there is a thin line between the repeated excretion of bodily fluids and actually sparkling humor – which Jorma Taccone doesn’t always walk with (style) confidence.
Samara Weaving is a tried and tested scream queen – but even she can’t keep up with the madness of Juliette Lewis!
In the first half hour, the script is limited to sharp-tongued but sometimes tough arguments between the only outwardly likeable Dan and the bitchy Lisa. The reasons for the quarrels range from a possible affair to their favorite food. So it takes a while for the pitch-black comedy to flip the switch, but then a romp tricked out with refreshingly old-fashioned make-up effects breaks out. With the misuse of a lawnmower, “Over Your Dead Body” even pays homage to Peter Jackson’s splatterfest “Braindead” (1992).
However, a narrative weakness of the original has not been remedied in the remake either: the artificially interwoven flashbacks, which are intended to give the events in the hut a certain context, continue to fail to give the bloody goings-on a serious and clever appearance. Instead, they seem like unnecessary foreign bodies in a film full of violent fantasies that saves its best (meta) punch line until the end.
Conclusion: With this bloody black comedy full of unbridled violence, the Norwegian original experiences an unnecessary but at least funny US remake. “Over Your Dead Body” justifies its existence primarily through Juliette Lewis, who once again shows courage in her choice of roles.