Verdict
Summary
Stylish and devilishly cute for such a blazingly violent and one-note movie, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a Russian blood, gore, and torture fest that becomes unrelentingly bleak and grim despite its upbeat and ultra ironic music choices, and it’s no fun for anyone who can’t “switch off” and just allow the violence to unfold. It’s sad. It’s gross. It’s … a black comedy.
Plot:
Matvey has just one objective: to gain entry to his girlfriend’s parents’ apartment and kill her father Andrey with a hammer to restore her honor. But all is not as it initially seems, and Matvey’s attempts to bludgeon the family patriarch to death don’t quite go to plan as Andrey proves a more formidable – not to mention ruthless – opponent than he anticipated… and Matvey, for his part, proves stubbornly unwilling to die.
Review:
A young man named Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) stands at the door of his girlfriend’s father’s apartment. He’s holding a hammer. It’s clear he intends to kill someone, and when his girlfriend’s mother answers the door, she invites the young man in and there is his girlfriend’s father Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev) eating his lunch at the table. As soon as Andrey sees the hammer in Matvey’s hand, the game is on. But before Matvey ever takes a swing at Andrey, it’s obvious that young Matvey is in over his head (way over), when it’s revealed that Andrey is a police detective and a tough and corrupt one at that. The game begins: these two guys start swinging household objects (including a television set, amongst other things) at each other, with the full intention of killing the other one, but what for? Matvey was led to believe that his girlfriend’s father molested her as a kid, and she’s asked him to restore her honor. Andrey insists that’s a lie, and when he calls his daughter on the phone, she claims she doesn’t know Matvey. Has Matvey been led into a trap? Who’s telling the truth, and why all the bloodshed all of a sudden? The only thing that’s certain is that everyone is hiding something except for Matvey, who is a patsy in a death game that will have no winners.
Stylish and devilishly cute for such a blazingly violent and one-note movie, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a Russian blood, gore, and torture fest that becomes unrelentingly bleak and grim despite its upbeat and ultra ironic music choices, and it’s no fun for anyone who can’t “switch off” and just allow the violence to unfold. It’s sad. It’s gross. It’s … a black comedy. If you like movies like Very Bad Things and some of Tarantino’s later films, you might enjoy it. I found it to be depressing and hard to watch. These characters have no souls. I’ve never found torture in movies enjoyable to watch. When the power drills come out, you know you’re stuck in the middle of a movie that was made by folks who don’t intend on their movie being enjoyed by everyone. From writer / director Kirill Sokolov.
Arrow Video recently released this title as part of their library, and while Arrow rarely distributes new, non-“classic” titles, they found something here that might connect with a small, horror-type consumer who enjoy their movies bloody. It comes with four short films by the director, the storyboards for the movie, behind-the-scenes material, and an interview.
