Why Don't You Just Die!
Arrow Video | Release Date (Streaming): April 20, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
EmpireNikki BaughanApr 24, 2020
A rip-roaring, bloody slice of Russian genre cinema that combines a tightly plotted narrative with a stylish command of craft to hugely entertaining, immersive effect. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 20, 2020
Why Don’t You Just Die! is an accomplished film that makes the very most of its limited sets, without seeming constricted or stagey. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeApr 20, 2020
It won’t be for everyone, certainly, but if social distancing has you not just climbing the walls but contemplating punching a hole in them, this might just be the perfect cathartic lockdown movie. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubWilliam HughesApr 21, 2020
At its best when breathlessly racing from one set piece to the next, Sokolov’s comedy really only has a single central joke to its name—gouts of blood firing in high-pressure streams at moments when the audience least expects them—and yet delivers that simple dose of brutal humor with mindful precision. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 20, 2020
Why Don’t You Just Die! is a grimly gruesome and laugh-out-loud tale of lies, double-crosses, brawls, gunplay and torture. And if Madonna’s ex-husband didn’t learn Russian to make it, writer-director Kirill Sokolov gives him quite the tip of the cap in this dark movie of murder and mayhem in Mother Russia. Read full review
70
The New York TimesGlenn KennyApr 21, 2020
Sokolov’s debut feature is a clever, bloody as hell, often hilarious virtuoso exercise in excruciating harm-doing among mendacious people. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 9, 2020
Set almost entirely in a corrupt cop’s Moscow apartment, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece — à la the Wachowski siblings’ clockwork-perfect queer-noir “Bound” or Sidney Lumet’s airtight but otherwise diabolical “Deathtrap” — in which a simple setup spirals into unimaginably twisted mayhem. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakApr 9, 2020
These people are so greedily narcissistic that the best fun lies in what they’re willing to do to each other and how they react upon realizing that truth. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsApr 17, 2020
The gory, but weirdly blasé Russian black comedy Why Don’t You Just Die! feels like a gross exercise in style that’s also a passable tribute to Jim Thompson’s bleakly hilarious crime novels, and a brain-dead critique of post-Soviet consumerism. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayApr 21, 2020
Why Don’t You Just Die! is too cartoonish and glib to have much to say about Russia or about genre films in general. But it is stylish and snazzy — a confident throwback to the knowing exploitation pictures of yesteryear. Read full review
60
CineVueChristopher MachellApr 20, 2020
Aside from the film’s more immediate pleasures, what is perhaps most intriguing about Why Don’t You Just Die! is Sokolov’s almost visible attempt to find his own voice: among this melange of film-school influences, it’s undoubtedly there, though perhaps it hasn’t quite formed yet. Read full review
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