I just came back to see if this is real

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#35 : She Dies Tomorrow

Amy Seimetz delivers an oddball US indie about a woman who is suddenly convinced she will die in 24 hours – and whose obsessive paranoia about impending death infects her friends with a pandemic-style contagion

Another one I'd never heard of but I was expecting it to be extremely odd indeed - because when The Guardian describes something as oddball, you know it's going to be off the scale oddness.  And, oh yes - odd very much covers it.

We start off with Amy who, it must be said, is quite sad - and boy, does she have a lot of ways in which she looks sad.  And you'd have to say that having a premonition that's she's going to die doesn't overly improve her mood - but I'd like to think that if I was going to die tomorrow, I'd spent my last 24 hours slightly more productively than she does.  Personally I don't think that putting on a sparkly dress and standing in front of a leaf blower is the best use of anyone's time, but maybe that's just me.  She does however drink a stupendous amount of wine - which is also probably not the most productive either, but she seems to cope pretty well with it, including doing a lot of driving.

From Amy, the premonition spreads to various other people - and, well, that's it really.  It incorporates an odd mix of styles in doing so, changing randomly from incredibly wordy to just abstract images, flitting around the timeline somewhat confusingly as it does so.  But, if the truth be told, that's pretty much it for the 85 minutes.

The main thing to say about this film is that most of it makes absolutely no sense at all - but I did find myself curiously drawn to it in order to see if it started making sense (spoiler alert - it didn’t). The obvious point of interest was whether they were actually going to die - but I can't tell you how that works out now, can I?  But the main thing that kept me engaged was watching how the various people coped with their impending demise - again, Amy doesn't use her time most productively (also spending time working out the best answerphone message to leave for people) but it's interesting to see the things that people choose to spend their time on and the way their priorities change when confronted with "the end".

It is beautifully shot with interesting use of light (which obviously signifies something, but I'm at a loss to explain it).  Some of the images are particularly beautiful and ethereal - the director has a good eye for meaningless abstract images - and there is effective use of sound as well to increase the general sense of uneasiness.

The acting is fine to good, if somewhat quirky - I spent a fair bit of time working out where I'd seen one of the actors before, until I remembered he was also in The Sinner Season 3, alongside Matt Bomer from the previous film.  Spooky, eh?

One final thing I took away from this film is that no-one seems to own a doorbell.  How could that even be a thing these days?  And yes, it makes no sense for this to be the one thing I complain about being unbelievable in this film.

Overall, it's a good-looking film which asks some interesting questions and presents some interesting viewpoints -  it certainly doesn't come up with any answers but, to be fair, it doesn't seem like it wants to.  I guess you're either going to come away from it thinking "wow - that's given me loads to think about" or "pah - what was the point to that then?".  Personally, I'm veering towards the latter - I didn't hate watching it, but I also don't think I particularly gained anything from watching it either.

At the time of writing, the film is available on Netflix or to rent from various other places - I'm not sure I'd specifically recommend it but if you were feeling philosophical and wanting something beautiful to ask you some questions, then you might like to consider it.

#36 - A film based on a very old play.  Older than me even!

#34 - An oddly unimpressive film