Fantastic Fest 2019 Review – Why Don’t You Just Die!

Why Don’t You Just Die!, 2018.

Directed by Kirill Sokolov.
Starring Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Vitaliy Khaev, Evgeniya Kregzhde, Michael Gor, Elena Shevchenko, and Igor Grabuzov.

SYNOPSIS:

Andrey, a detective and the world’s most horrible father, brings together a terrible group of people in his apartment: his resentful actress daughter, an angry thug, and a cheated cop. Each one of them has a reason to want revenge.

What happens when you take an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, the aesthetic of Tarantino and the sound of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western soundtracks and set it in a Russian apartment? One of the most impressive feature debuts of the year, Kirill Sokolov’s Why Don’t You Just Die!

We follow Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) who rings the bell outside of an apartment door with sweat on his face and a hammer being concealed behind his back. He wants to kill the man who lives in the apartment, Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev), a former police detective who sexually abused his daughter, Matvey’s girlfriend Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde). Matvey cannot refuse so he goes off to try and kill a man, so he repeats to himself “Evil won’t touch me” a number of times before finally opening the door and – let’s just say all hell breaks loose.

Movies with only one location can be tricky because you run the risk of the action quickly turning repetitive and boring. Thankfully, Why Don’t You Just Die! Knows exactly how to avoid this. The exquisite production design captures bold and cartoon-bright primary colours, like the vodka and sausage that are consumed on screen. Likewise, Dmitriy Ulyukaev’s camera floats and warps in and out of the action and around the characters, capturing the tension before the action and how that action impacts each of the characters. Likewise, the score effortlessly goes from modern-sounding music that people Matvey’s age would recognize, but also relying on detours towards more heroic sounds that remind of Ennio Morricone’s scores for spaghetti westerns.

Sokolov wears his influence on his sleeves, particular the action style of filmmaking by Quentin Tarantino. The violence escalated exponentially and bloodily fast. This is irresistible force meets immovable object: the movie, with Matvey and Andrey’s wanting nothing more than to murder each other, even if they find themselves nearly unable to die. Be warned, this is the most cartoony and violent movie you’ll see in years. The difficulty and hard work required to kill someone brings to mind last year’s The Night Comes For Us, even if the comedic tone of the gunfights reminds of an Itchy & Scratchy-cartoon brought to life. Bones crack and get nailed, guts are spilled, and blood fills the walls and floors like it flooded the whole place with dirty water.

If there’s an issue with the movie is its use of flashbacks. Every couple of minutes, the stories goes back in time to show how characters got to where we first meet them, adding to their motivation. The problem is that they feel more like commercial breaks than organic additions to the story. Just when the action builds up towards an explosive climax, a flashback comes on screen and all the tension deflates, making you sit through what feels like filler before you can finally see if Andrey really used a power drill on Matvey. The same applies for the characters themselves and the emotion that they try to bring to the screen. It should be important, but it feels like checking an unnecessary storytelling box that pales in comparison to the cartoony violence the film is clearly more interested in.

Why Don’t You Just Die! Is one hell of an impressive debut film for Sokolov, which offers fantastic and inventive camera work as well as riveting cartoony violence that shoots adrenaline straight to your veins.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Rafael Motamayor