Writer-director Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow isn’t the first 2020 release to gain unexpected layers by arriving during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s perhaps the most prescient. A visually vivid absurdist thriller that’s unsettling and darkly funny in equal measure, it concerns Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), a woman consumed by the notion that she will die tomorrow.
Her’s isn’t a suicidal inclination, rather an unwavering conviction of her imminent demise. She vocalises this belief to her friend Jane (Jane Adams), with Jane then gripped by the same doom-laden anxiety. Jane then talks of her own death tomorrow to her brother (Chris Messina) and his party guests, and an increasing number of characters become ‘infected’ by this emotional contagion, the effects including transcendental visions and varying degrees of either panic or acceptance.
Whether consciously or not, much of the multi-talented Seimetz’s work has concerned mortality in various ways. Her striking first feature as director, Sun Don’t Shine (2012), is a Florida noir that resembles what you might get if Lynne Ramsay adapted a Jim Thompson story – like Ramsay’s Morvern Callar (2002), it involves the attempted discreet disposal of a body. As an actor, Seimetz’s credits include several key horror films of the last decade, from independent breakthrough You’re Next (2011) to studio spine-chillers Alien: Covenant (2017) and Pet Sematary (2019). Her fee for the latter reportedly funded She Dies Tomorrow.
Speaking to us via Zoom, Seimetz discussed the film’s existential dread and eccentricities…
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