“Over Your Dead Body” (2026) turns a couple’s weekend getaway into a game of homicidal game of one-upmanship as commercial director, Dan Burton (Jason Segel), takes his wife, actor Lisa (Samara Weaving), to the family cabin with plans to kill her, but she figures it out and gets the drop on him. Unfortunately for the two of them, some prisoners plan their escape around the same time and complicate the spat. Will Dan emerge as a man willing to fight and get what he wants? With all the murder and mayhem, it may not give the impression of a slow burn movie, but this English adaptation of the Norwegian film, “The Trip” (2021), saves the best for last and becomes a wacky, unhinged, hilarious, merciless massacre that will have you howling in the aisles if you have a sick sense of humor.
I tried to watch “The Trip” after seeing “Over Your Dead Body,” but the Netflix app on the Roku player has subtitle issues. I initially had a hard time getting into the American version because Segel’s face looks different to me, and I could not place which actor he looks like now. It is still bugging me. He plays Dan as a sad sack who would roll over for anyone and is just on automatic. His dad, Michael (Paul Guilfoyle who delivers a perfect performance that elevates the movie), wishes a war upon him so Dan can become a man. Dan seethes with resentment over anything. He does not connect with anyone: his coworker, Louise (Jennifer Amaka Pettersson), his childhood friend who works around his house, Henry (Jake Curran), or his neighbor, Rachel (Danusia Samal). He is just going through the motions and deeply unhappy with his life, especially his creatively inert career, then misdirects it towards his wife.
Lisa is no angel. Weaving has a talent for playing violent women so it is no surprise when Lisa stops giving vibes of a sullen teenager forced to spend time with her dad (Weaving looks so young and small here probably because Segal is so tall) to a woman who finally stops playing nice and lets out all the vitriol that she has been holding back. “Over Your Dead Body” becomes electric at the first confrontation because they finally get to be honest with each other, but the tension shifts from which one will succeed against the other (despite the size difference, Lisa has the advantage of not being squeamish, defending her life and not wasting energy with prettying up a crime) to will the couple unite or try to leverage the escapees against each other. Lisa also is alive in a way that Dan is not. She still wants to be an actor and feels betrayed that she was not his professional partner too.
Half the fun of watching “Over Your Dead Body” is the narrative structure. The story pauses, rewinds and shows what happened from another character’s point of view to explain to the moviegoers how each character arrived at the cabin and interrupted someone else’s plans. It starts with Dan’s and Lisa’s perspective then the escapees. Usually when movies use this narrative device, it is boring because it retreads familiar ground. Not here! The tangents change the pace of the movie and keeps it fresh and unpredictable as different characters’ mindset and interactions get introduced. It can speed up or slow down the pace, which creates a delightful variety. It may be counterintuitive, but what happens when the action slows down matters more than the action. A lot of filmmakers never imagine what life is like for their characters during down time, and this quotidian tangent makes the movie special.
The married couple show regular people behaving at their extreme, most anti-social, divided behavior, but what do two murderers and a complicit guard do as a cohesive social unit? It is a sweet and sour contrast: the deviants form a better unit than the acceptable couple. The chemistry between the three actors is solid and undeniable. Someone send it to the MCU so they understand how to create a convincing, conflict-free team. The strongest bond is not between Allegra (Juliette Lewis) and her lover, Pete (Timothy Olyphant), who seems bored now that he got what he wanted from her, but Allegra and bruiser Todd (Keith Jardine). They are genuinely friends on the same wavelength. If they were kids growing up in the same neighborhood, they would have hung out daily until the streetlights came on. The news broadcasts depict them as dangerous, but seeing them vibe with each other, they seem dumb and possibly manipulable.
Once the two groups intermingle, the question is will the escapee group remain cohesive or become vulnerable to manipulation, how bad will it get for the couple as a unit or individuals, will the couple unite against a common enemy or try to use them? Once the answer becomes clear, it could get monotonous even as the action increases and becomes more merciless. “Over Your Dead Body” makes both groups incredibly hard to kill and requests suspension of disbelief. Just when the audience will be starting to mentally check out, don’t. Writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney still find ways to surprise and kick the action into a higher gear, which does not seem possible considering how violent things get when the groups clash.
The real point of “Over Your Dead Body” is to turn Dan into a grown man, which is only possible with a physical confrontation and risking his life. Eyeroll. As much as this story’s moral plays into insufferable gender norms, the movie is too much fun to pass because of principles unless it is an absolute dealbreaker for you. If you are incapable of finding humor in gratuitous brutality, consider yourself warned, but you will be missing out because it is an energizing, joyous rip-roaring movie experience. It does make me wonder if a person will prefer whichever version they saw first, the original or the English language remake, because they will not see it coming. Usually, the original or foreign films are better, but it is hard to imagine topping the theatrical experience at home alone.
In a world where a major studio distributes “The Roses” (2025) that flinches from committing to the bit thus ruining the fun and becoming inadvertently serious instead of comedic, take notes from “Over Your Dead Body.” It genuinely feels consequential each time Lisa takes a blow to the face, but somehow the laughs are still feasible without feeling uncomfortable. It is also incredibly gnarly and gross, which makes it funnier. The absurdity of the situation is delightful. If normies unleashed their inner beasts, what could they achieve even against hardened criminals with more experience? It is a nice little fantasy, but do not try this at your vacation home.
