'Over Your Dead Body': Masters of Mayhem.

Kurt Loder
Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

Just when you think that "Over Your Dead Body" has gone as far as it can down the road of blood-spattered hilarity — past the introductory hammers and hacksaws and spools of binding tape, past the requisite quart bottle of chloroform — just when you think the movie can't go any further into this world of gritty hard-R ... that's when it goes there.

Directed by Jorma Taccone, of The Lonely Island, the picture is drawn from a 2021 Norwegian film by Tommy Wirkola (helmer of the similarly splattery "Dead Snow" movies). And the actors Taccone has cast for this American version — including Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis — appear to be having maximum fun. (Weaving, who might have been cloned from fellow Australian Margot Robbie, is quick and funny and entirely starlike.)

Briefly, a couple named Dan (Segel) and Lisa (Weaving) have embarked on a weekend getaway to work on their collapsing marriage. They've been together for seven years and are very much over each other. Dan is a filmmaker who hasn't made an actual film in nearly a decade and has been reduced to shooting pop-up internet ads to get by. Lisa is an actress — in Dan's view a bad one. She hates his snotty narcissism and he's grown to dislike her Aussie accent. (He says it sounds "like British crossed with the devil.") And this little time-out they're taking in the snowy woods of upstate New York (the movie was shot in Finland) has an ulterior purpose: After much contemplation, Dan and Lisa have each decided to kill one another. (Big insurance policies make this a powerful temptation for both of them.)
Updated: Fri Apr 24, 2026

Just when you think that "Over Your Dead Body" has gone as far as it can down the road of blood-spattered hilarity — past the introductory hammers and hacksaws and spools of binding tape, past the requisite quart bottle of chloroform — just when you think the movie can't go any further into this world of gritty hard-R ... that's when it goes there.

Directed by Jorma Taccone, of The Lonely Island, the picture is drawn from a 2021 Norwegian film by Tommy Wirkola (helmer of the similarly splattery "Dead Snow" movies). And the actors Taccone has cast for this American version — including Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis — appear to be having maximum fun. (Weaving, who might have been cloned from fellow Australian Margot Robbie, is quick and funny and entirely starlike.)

Briefly, a couple named Dan (Segel) and Lisa (Weaving) have embarked on a weekend getaway to work on their collapsing marriage. They've been together for seven years and are very much over each other. Dan is a filmmaker who hasn't made an actual film in nearly a decade and has been reduced to shooting pop-up internet ads to get by. Lisa is an actress — in Dan's view a bad one. She hates his snotty narcissism and he's grown to dislike her Aussie accent. (He says it sounds "like British crossed with the devil.") And this little time-out they're taking in the snowy woods of upstate New York (the movie was shot in Finland) has an ulterior purpose: After much contemplation, Dan and Lisa have each decided to kill one another. (Big insurance policies make this a powerful temptation for both of them.)

Complicating matters are a trio of violent prison escapees: lovebirds Pete and Allegra (Olyphant and Lewis, both going all-out) and a hulking galoot named Todd (Keith Jardine). There's also a character called Henry (Jake Curran), who's been recruited by Dan to come aboard as a kind of assistant murderer. All of these people get right to work screwing things up, usually in very bloody ways. And all of them are quickly impressed by the venomous toxicity of Dan and Lisa's relationship.

"You're trying to kill me!" she shouts, after learning what her scheming hub has planned for her.

"That's all you do is criticize me," Dan says.

The script, by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, is a lively English-language revamp of Wirkola's original, and it distributes many snappy lines among the characters. (Asked what payment he might want for helping to kill Lisa, lonely yokel Henry tells Dan, "I'd like us to hang out more.") There's also a lot of breathtaking mayhem, possibly reflecting the participation of producer and stunt veteran David Leitch, a mainstay of the "John Wick" movies.

This is the kind of picture whose makers clearly felt that too much is never quite enough. Which, if you're reading this, will probably be exactly right.