Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is Gore Verbinski’s triumphant return to the big screen for the first time in about a decade. In 2016, he helmed a horror movie, A Cure for Wellness. This is about as tonally different from that movie as you can get, but it attacks a similar thought: there is something horrifyingly wrong. This time, it’s something wrong with our society.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Review
In Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the world has been utterly desensitized by phones, social media, and AI. Sound familiar? In this world, Sam Rockwell’s unnamed man from the future arrives from, well, the future to try and prevent the AI apocalypse. He’s been coming to this moment 117 different times to try to compile the right group of people.
Those people are going to help him get to the creation of a super-AI that’s being made that ultimately creates the downfall of society. A few characters appropriately point out that AI is already a thing, and that it’s too late to stop it, which is a scathing but accurate reflection of our society from Gore Verbinski.
But this particular AI is too far, and it destroys the world, so future scientists have created guardrails to put in place so that the AI can be created, but won’t destroy the world. I really don’t want to spoil the ending, but one of my biggest initial problems with the movie was that it was taking a hard anti-AI stance while trying to posit that all we need are guardrails. A later twist flips the entire ideology on its head in an utterly brilliant way.
So Rockwell has accumulated what he thinks is going to be the right combination of people this time, and in a deliciously meta way, it is the right group. Rockwell is the frontman and the star of the show, but he’s backed by an excellent ensemble cast. Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson are all good.
Each “main” character has their own backstory that ties into the overarching narrative. Each of them had a different technological issue that ultimately led them to this point. So while AI is the big bad, there are other modern societal issues at play here, too.
One character has lost her son to a school shooting. In this world, they’re ridiculously common, and there’s a secret agency that just clones the victims and even the shooters themselves sometimes. The government even funds most of the cloning in those situations, accurately reflecting the sheer refusal to do anything about the shootings themselves. Instead of cloning, the government could just enact some gun control laws.
They don’t, and unfortunately, in the real world, cloning doesn’t exist. My only gripe here is that the mothers who’ve now lost their child multiple times are not at all upset. Some of them revel in the chance to create a new version, a kooky one this time, of their child.
I understand it’s a reflection of the desensitization society has, and it’s kind of funny, but there’s something incredibly sad about depicting apathy and even humor in the face of such immense loss. The parents, at the very least, shouldn’t find it funny.
Another character loses the only loved one they’ve really ever had in adult life to a VR world that’s better than our own. He signs up to cosplay Wall-E by living in a pod while perpetually in a virtual reality (run by the AI that’s yet to be created).
Another takes over teaching a high school class that’s literally glued to their phones. It’s an over-the-top but not inaccurate look at classrooms today. There is a youth (I can say that now that I’m aged out and would be considered “unc” by the youth) who is increasingly dependent on their phones and decreasingly interested in the classroom (which circles back perfectly to an overreliance on AI. ChatGPT, anyone?).
It hits a ton of really pressing issues that I also happen to be somewhat passionate about. The third act veers into surreal territory that almost takes me out, but there is enough heart, humor, and plot twists to help keep the immersion in the story. I really love the ending, which needs to be experienced without spoilers because it’ll be one of the best endings of the year.
Gore Verbinski directs Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die really well. It’s got the zaniness turned up high at all times, and it is beating with a frenetic heart. That’s all pulled forward by a magnetic Sam Rockwell performance. He is electric here.
There are some lighting issues since the movie largely takes place at night, which I think robs us of some of the potential vibrancy and colorfulness we see in glimpses. Additionally, the script leaves a few too many holes or relies a little too heavily on our suspension of disbelief.
Conclusion
Is Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die a perfect movie? Not at all. Sometimes, though, a movie just absolutely rocks in spite of its flaws. It’s a little messy, a little convoluted, and a little confusing. Not all the loose threads tie together, and some of the movie will absolutely leave you scratching your head. But when everything else is so good, it’s really easy to have fun and overlook those flaws.
Score: 4.25/5
