With a blunt title that has a pleasing inappropriateness given the extreme circumstances of the world right now, Kirill Sokolov’s thrilling, psychotic chamber piece arrives on home viewing having been denied a minor theatrical release by the global lockdown. A self-contained bloodbath of grim humour and Matryoshka doll storytelling, Why Don’t You Just Die is a startling, hugely enjoyable debut only slightly let down by a slight lack of its own identity.
Love-struck, dim-witted Matvei (Aleksandr Kusnetsov) knocks on the door of Andrei (Vitaliy Khaev), the father of his girlfriend Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde). This is no social call however as the young man is hiding a hammer behind his back and has murder on his mind. Matvei is by no means a professional assassin and Andrei is a policeman with a lengthy career riddled with considerable corruption, so it isn’t long before tables are turned and the situation becomes infinitely more complex.
Sokolov’s film doesn’t have an original frame in it, but there can be no quibbling with its myriad influences and the gimlet magpie eye he turns on his shiny muses. Suitably for the clockwork storytelling and outlandish violence, Sokolov’s employs a hyper-stylised approach with a pastel palette of lush green and increasing quantities of red. It becomes easy to believe that Jeunet‘s Amelie Poulain is going about her whimsical business elsewhere in the same apartment block.
Sokolov also litters his film with stylistic tics reminiscent of other great innovators of the 90s and 00s, such as the free-floating, physics-defying camerawork of David Fincher and the restless kinesis of Trainspotting-era Danny Boyle. Throw in a big bag of money courtesy of a professional betrayal carried out by Andrei against an old comrade (Michael Gorevoy), and the film becomes an even more Grand Guignol spin on Boyle’s debut Shallow Grave. The overall effect is something of a delicious throwback.
While the lack of originality is glaring, the film is otherwise a glorious thrill-ride with a Damoclean tension right from the superbly shot and choreographed prologue of cartoonish, Raimi-esque violence. This is played to the hilt by its extremely game stars. Kusnetsov’s Matvei makes up for a lack of brains with a leaden resilience of such dogged determination it’s impossible not to laugh. Andrei looks like a Tundra-hewn Ross Kemp and is as sly as he is brutal. While the violence is played for dark laughs throughout, there is one scene where a power drill is brandished in which it is very difficult to find the humour. This is the only moment where the tone wobbles slightly, otherwise the cast is simply composed of appalling, jerry-rigged Duracel bunnies left to inflict escalating levels of pain on each other.
Most of all, Why Don’t You Just Die is just great fun, with its wince-inducing gore staying just about on the right side of sadistic. Sokolov’s clever, bleakly ironic writing also has an undercurrent of satire railing against Russia’s post-Soviet gangster capitalism that at least makes a token attempt to provide some social context to the carnage. It’s perhaps the bloodiest puzzle of a chamber piece since the first Saw and adds something new to Russian cinema beyond Eisenstein and Tarkovsky.
Available on Blu-ray Mon 20 Apr 2020