We’re all responsible of pulling out our telephones and doomscrolling by means of anxious headlines or mindnumbing movies after we ought to be doing anything. We all know it’s dangerous, however we nonetheless do it as a result of it’s onerous to withstand when a lot of our time is spent dwelling and dealing on our gadgets. And though we perceive that we’d be higher off with much less display time, our extraordinarily on-line society doesn’t precisely encourage that sort of wholesome conduct.
These are a few of the acquainted concepts at work in Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Don’t Die, director Gore Verbinski’s new sci-fi movie a couple of man’s determined struggle to avoid wasting humanity from an apocalyptic future the place machines have taken over the world. Although the film’s time-travelling, robot-fighting premise instantly calls the Terminator and Matrix franchises to thoughts, Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Don’t Die is a a lot weirder and extra whimsical exploration of our anxieties about synthetic intelligence.
At occasions, the movie stumbles because it tries to comedically articulate all of the methods through which tomorrow’s societal collapse might be traced again to our current day display addictions. However as unhinged as Good Luck’s story turns into, it speaks on to our current second, always being bombarded with brain-smoothing content material whereas being pushed to unthinkingly undertake new expertise.
Set largely in current day Los Angeles, Good Luck follows an unnamed man claiming to be from the longer term (a surprisingly magnetic Sam Rockwell) as he holds up a diner and tries to persuade its patrons to hitch him on a quest to forestall AI from changing into an unstoppable menace. Within the time traveler’s actuality, what’s left of humanity has gone into hiding. At first, nobody within the diner places a lot inventory within the man’s ravings. However all of them begin taking him extra critically when he flings open his home made time journey go well with — which appears like a bunch of rubbish he’s taped collectively — and tells them he’s wired himself with explosives.
Although there’s a madcap zaniness to the way in which Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Don’t Die introduces its world-weary protagonist, the film repeatedly shifts gears because it peeks into the lives of the individuals he hopes are the correct people to recruit to his trigger. The movie appears like a C-tier horror when it flashes again to the day that academics Janet (Zazie Beetz) and Mark (Michael Peña) have had whereas trapped in a college full of scholars who change into hypnotized by a wierd sign emanating from their telephones. However the menacing vibes are far more grounded by relationship drama after we’re given a glimpse into the lifetime of Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a lady who struggles to maintain a job due to her uncommon allergy to Wi-Fi indicators.
Regardless of having made his journey into the previous to that particular diner dozens of occasions, the person from the longer term isn’t fully sure which mixture of individuals is the correct one. It’s solely as a result of he already is aware of so many particulars about all of them that a few of the individuals begin to imagine that he is perhaps telling the reality. And whereas none of them are absolutely sure that the person might be trusted, Susan (Juno Temple) — a mom who has just lately gone by means of a devastating loss — has a sense that the issues he’s saying tie instantly into the private challenges they’ve all been coping with.
Picture: Briarcliff Leisure
Matthew Robinson’s script tends to get a bit of overbusy, however the movie’s Rashomon-like method to unveiling its bigger story provides Verbinski — whose final movie, A Remedy For Wellness, premiered 9 years in the past — ample house to mess around together with his directorial model. He typically leans into a visible hyperactiveness that echoes the longer term man’s bodily jitteriness and displays the movie’s concepts concerning the risks of being hyperstimulated by expertise. That vitality works particularly nicely throughout a few of Good Luck’s extra batshit motion sequences involving creatures that appear like indictments of gen AI slop. However the film’s best scenes come when Verbinski slows his digicam down to offer us a superb take a look at simply how unusual and dysfunctional this world already is within the current.
Even when Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Don’t Die is tripping over its personal toes to weave its plots collectively, the film is an impressed joyride that’s making an attempt to say a bit of bit about every thing that makes life in 2026 really feel like we’re hurtling into an abyss. And on this second when Hollywood is dashing to get everybody to embrace the gen AI agenda, it’s a reduction to see somebody inform us the sky is falling with urgency, even when he’s acquired a bomb strapped to his chest.
Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Don’t Die additionally stars Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Riccardo Drayton, Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton, Daniel Barnett, Dominique Maher, Adam Burton, and Georgia Goodman. The film hits theaters on February thirteenth.
