Didn’t Die is a movie about trying to live at the end of the world. And not in the way that we’ve seen it before in a lot of the zombie material that we’ve gotten in movies and TV shows. In those pieces of media it’s all about survival in the purest form. It’s about scavenging for enough food and water and having shelter. The basics. Didn’t Die is about embracing your humanity and the things you like despite everything that’s going on around you.
For the main character of Didn’t Die Vinita, the parts of her humanity that she’s embracing, is her podcast. When we meet her she’s traveling across the country with her brother Rish. He’s putting up posters for her 100th podcast episode while she is keeping an eye out on the car. It’s a startling way to introduce the core characters. But it sets the tone for the movie and goes to show you that even though the world has ended, they’re still living.
The same thing goes for the rest of Vinita’s family. She has another brother, Hari, who is living with his wife Barbara in their family home. For Hari and Barbara in particular, they still take the time to do the things that they liked to do before the apocalypse. Hari plays the piano while Barbara sings. And Barbara is honestly really relatable in her doing her makeup, still dressing nice, but absolutely ready to take any zombie down if they come into her home and try to hurt her or her loved ones.
But… I would have truly loved Didn’t Die if it wasn’t for the last 15 minutes. During the core parts of this film, we got to see various bonds between the siblings, people from their past, and even just people that were interested in listening to this podcast and recounting the horrible things they’ve gone through. That set this story apart from any other zombie property that I’ve ever watched. But towards the end it felt like they decided to shed the commentary about still living at the end of the world to just make everything like The Walking Dead.
No shade to The Walking Dead because I’ve watched that show since the very start, but Didn’t Die had something unique. They were telling a different kind of end of the world story. One that felt a little bit ridiculous because who would think about keeping up with their podcast at the end of the world? The answer is Vinita. She found her reason to live in her podcast. And then it was all thrown away for a morose ending with a little dash of hope.
Ultimately Didn’t Die has the potential to go beyond just being a film at 1 hour and 33 minutes. It has the potential to expand into a TV series. But the only way that it could do that is if it remembers the snark and humor that held up these traumatized siblings. A TV show might suit this story better even when cracks start to appear in the humans as they try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and the zombies themselves when they come to take their pound of flesh. It’s about balance. Didn’t Die had it in the beginning and squandered it towards the end, wasting the potential of these really unique characters.
Didn’t Die premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
