Domestic Murder Games

A husband and wife who want to kill each other are held captive by escaped convicts in 2026's Over Your Dead Body. This is a remake of a 2021 Norwegian film I've not seen but I liked this one pretty well.

It's a good autumnal film, filled with leaves the colours of the season. For some reason it was shot in Finland, though it takes place in the US. Nearly all of the movie takes place at a lake house where the married couple have gone ostensibly for some peace and quiet. But as we're clued in by the awkward alibi set up by the husband (in conversation with a coworker, he randomly volunteers that his wife wants to go hunting in the woods alone) the real point of this trip is murder.

Jason Segel plays the husband, Dan, and Samara Weaving plays his wife, Lisa. Both are quite good and very funny--this is a comedy thriller. Critics have referred to Hitchcock and, with the autumn leaves, it does kind of remind me of The Trouble with Harry. Hitchcock would also likely have been interested in the procedural qualities. As you can see in the trailer, Dan and Lisa both go over their plans in detail.

The unhappy couple's conflict is interrupted when two escaped convicts show up along with the corrections officer who helped them escape, played by Juliette Lewis. She's in love with one of the two convicts, played by Timothy Olyphant. They're both quite good and well cast. The film pulls no punches for threats of violence and sexual assault, which is of course crucial for a dark comedy. I found it all quite funny though maybe the funniest scene is right at the beginning when we seen Dan at his job, which is directing pop-up ads. The one we see him making captures the insipid tone of one of them so well that the inherent comedy in the fact that real human beings make these things (though perhaps not for very much longer) lands nicely. It's kind of similar to how Segel's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was set up as being a composer for cop mystery shows, writing scores that basically consisted of him holding one finger down on the key of a synthesiser. It works, though.