A sci-fi road trip messily soaked in sorrow, “We’re All Gonna Die” hails its premise in a spectacular way before shifting to the backburner. The lead performances are sometimes effective, but the writer-director duo of Freddie Wong and Matthew Arnold of the web-based studio RocketJump lose control over the emotional aspect of the film, resulting in weirdness in the undertones.
It’s been twelve years and close to fifteen hundred jumps later hence placing the film anytime after 2036 when an enormous alien “spike” has crash-landed on Earth and is now teleporting around the globe. The situation is however strange; this technology suddenly seems to have made no progress and mass death and casualties have become so bad that they are utterly normal and mundane.
As Thalia the beekeeper (Ashly Burch) appeases herself with her chores, her mom and the mother of her husband feel the void in their hearts mourning the loss of her daughter and husband, a void that she seems to brush off as the grass at their gravestones remains overgrown and unkempt. With the massive icicle still in sight, she sets off for an important honey shipment delivery via truck that’s intended to settle some of her growing debts, on the way she (rather literally) bumps into Kai (Jordan Rodrigues), an EMT who has lost his close friend and is attempting to numb the pain in his derelict sports car. As soon as their collision-cum-introduction develops into the third phase, they are met with a bizarre twist caused by Thalia’s bees and Kai’s sports car that is transported to another form of location, forcing them to work together and recover the vehicle which helps them in overcoming internal conflicts.
Sadly, aspects of the film’s composition soon come into play. Although there are some moments where the characters have to be quiet which suggests that they have some chemistry in a somewhat comical manner such as when Thalia is annoyed that she is aroused by Kai’s fine calf muscles the dialogues between them appear monotonous and this results in long scenes that lack movement and depth. Even this lack of retailing ability carries on to the comic aspects of the movie as well; apart from a few slapstick moments (like Thalia trying to keep her fantasies about calves under control), however, most of the humor is based not on the characters’ eccentricities and relationships but on their comical statements and remarks which were more based on common themes amongst them.
At first, in fact, the jabs made by the pair impose the notion of romantic tension between them in the midst of their confounding circumstances but this particular style of banter between them is hardly moderated, even when the characters themselves are pushed to consider the idea of the different ways in which they deal with bereavement. It reaches a point where every minor character they encounter typically a lost, relatable character with his own personal hardships and issues becomes a punching bag for their barbed words, leading to a persistent sting of insolence.
Throughout, the narrative device of the film is augmented even further in the background until the viewer hardly has the chance to see it before it comes back with features (and more importantly, emotional attachments) unlike those established before. This dizzying rapid travel of the spike however becomes one more moving metaphor, a metaphor that is too flexible and a distance apart from the characters physically that it should be a voice of the characters in the background.
The abstractive science fiction has a great scope in dealing with the intricate relationships of loss (Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain), however, “We’re All Gonna Die” depicts its icons the very poor to be of any significance. It is a mass fusion of a post-covid movie genre in which the death of many and its societal changes are addressed. But despite the fact that loss is a theme for every minor and major character in the film, none of these losses however ever seem to portray the amount of ripples that these losses may have on the society and its people.
Burch and Rodrigues, at the very least, contribute enough emotional depth to the film, thus making it relative, as contrasted by the dreamlike warmth of the cinematographer Bongani Mlambo’s lavish, magic-hour images. The performers fight, in a well-crafted and purposeful fashion, against the baffling scale of loss. The directors, however, do this, too. And this is where the emphasis is less intended. In this case, “We’re All Gonna Die” is very nearly tragically relevant.
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