Over Your Dead Body Review: Shotgun Wedding

The term “Hollywood remake of a foreign film that was a festival smash” normally fills the chest with dread. So went the initial response to the idea of Over Your Dead Body, a remake of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian bloody action comedy The Trip – a film that was the definitional genre festival smash but didn’t really make a dent with mainstream audiences. The problem with such films is that they’re either slavishly loyal and therefore redundant, or they try to forge their own path and end up missing what made the original worthwhile.

Luckily for Over Your Dead Body, director and Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone created a film that is both loyal but far from redundant. Instead, it’s an adept translation that is in turns bloody and cruel, insightful and hilarious, and, under the plentiful gore and uproarious laughter, a surprisingly touching drama. Just one with slapstick bloodbath tendencies.

It’s the kind of smart-silly action-horror-comedy hybrid that Samara Weaving has made her own since 2017’s corporate shoot-’em-up Mayhem and through the Ready or Not franchise. Here, she’s far from the naif dodging bullets and axes. She plays Lisa, a failed actress with a caustic and callous streak who can lay the blame for her failures directly at the feet of her equally unsuccessful director husband, Dan (Jason Segel), who looks at his life and blames her for holding him back. Still, it’s nothing that a nice weekend break at his father’s remote cabin won’t fix. Very remote. As in, no-one-would-find-the-body remote – a thought that has crossed both their minds, as has that multimillion-dollar life insurance policy that they took out on each other when they were young and ambitious and optimistic and could still stand the sight of each other.

Weaving is the undoubted monarch of the kind of slightly cartoonish violence that inevitably erupts when the battling duo are behind closed doors. But it’s absolutely not what you expect from Segel. However, the success and joy of the film come down to the casting being a natural extension of their established personas. With Weaving, it’s that new edge of sadism and sharp-tongued honesty that hurts as much as any blow struck. With Segel, it’s the logical next step for his sad-sack persona that made him a household name in How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. All that self-pity has finally soured into self-righteousness, and everyone’s favorite Muppet of a man has become frayed around the edges. Taccone may also be the first director to utilize Segel’s bulk for something other than laughs, as there’s a real element of power and danger to him. Moreover, the script still gives Segel a character to bite into, allowing him to give one of his most nuanced performances in an environment that wouldn’t necessarily call for it. It’s a similar experience to watching the supporting goof transform into an indie leading man for 2011’s Jeff, Who Lives at Home.

It’s also a film of growth for Taccone, who nailed broad comedy as director of MacGruber and co-director of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping but here captures the emotional complexity of two people who hate the person they’re supposed to love. Keeping that relationship front and center allows him to pace the introduction of outsider forces without disrupting what the film’s really about. Even when a trio of strangers drop in (played by a delightfully dopey Keith Jardine, Juliette Lewis at her wild-eyed best, and Timothy Olyphant flicking the switch on that always-hinted-at vicious streak), it never really distracts from Segel and Weaving. Even at the couple’s most murderous, they keep a certain sad warmth to Dan and Lisa, and an unexpected hope that maybe these two axe-wielding kids can make it work after all.

Over Your Dead Body

2026, R, 105 min. Directed by Jorma Taccone. Starring Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Keith Jardine, Jake Curran, Robert Goodman.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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