“She Dies Tomorrow”: Are You Telling Me This Is the Ultimate Feminist, Existentialist Horror Film That Captures the CD-19 Zeitgeist?

Imagine a child picking up a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales only to discover that the last several pages of each story have been torn out. Are Hansel and Gretel turned into mincemeat by the evil witch? Is Snow White rented out by her height-challenged pals to Sealy for their mattress ads? Does Rapunzel yell, “Fuck it all!” and get a pixie cut?

That’s how I felt about Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow, one of the more acclaimed films of the month. At a “pivotal” moment, Tomorrow’s oft-annoying heroine, Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), who you might well wish would kick the bucket today, looks out at a barren landscape, gazing this way and that, with smudged eyeliner. We follow her despondent glare as she continues looking but not seeing, and so on and so forth for close to two minutes. A very long two minutes. (One of her smudged eyes is also featured in the opening shot.)

Jane (Jane Adams) revenges herself on the medical profession by making a doctor (Josh Lucas) depressed.

Please note that there have been very few characters in my rather prolonged career as a film viewer, which started out with The Lady and the Tramp, who I couldn’t bear being…