She Dies Tomorrow review: Virus-themed horror feels eerily revelant

What was originally intended to be a nightmarish fable about anxiety has instantly transformed into a nightmarish fable about the current crisis

Dir: Amy Seimetz. Starring: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Jennifer Kim, Michelle Rodriguez. 15 cert, 84 mins

Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) isn’t feeling like herself today. She wanders through the hallways of her new home – aimless, as if she were half-person, half-ghost. She pours herself a glass of wine, clutching it as if it contained the blood of Christ. It’s something to savour. So, too, are the wooden floorboards – as she traces her hands over the veins. Amy is convinced she will die tomorrow. She doesn’t know how, but the thought has become a kind of cancerous growth.

Amy Seimetz wrote and shot her film, aptly named She Dies Tomorrow, long before the Covid-19 pandemic. But the parallels are undeniably eerie. What was originally intended to be a nightmarish fable about anxiety has instantly transformed into a nightmarish fable about the current crisis. Our world not only has to deal with a real virus, but the constant fear and uncertainty that comes with it. It’s an unexpected twist of Seimetz, whose varied career as an actor, writer, director, and producer has seen her work on projects as diverse as Alien: Covenant, The Girlfriend Experience, and Pet Sematary.

And so She Dies Tomorrow gains a new layer of creeping terror, now that it captures the mood of a world faced with its own mortality. Jane (Jane Adams) returns home. She sits, taking photographs of blood cells under a microscope, which she plans to print out and sell as art pieces. Then something hits her. Seimetz represents it as a wave of colours, flashing lights, and muffled voices. Jane realises she will die tomorrow. The thought itself is a virus, passed between humans. She travels to her brother’s (Chris Messina) house, where he’s celebrating his birthday with his wife (Katie Aselton) and two friends (Jennifer Kim and Tunde Adebimpe). They become infected, too.

The walking dead: Jane Adams stars as Jane, one of the victims of the mind virus (Jay Keitel)

We only learn a handful of details of Amy and her life. She’s a recovering alcoholic. A shot of a man tearing a room apart, screaming “It’s f***ing over! I’m f***ing dying!”, hints both at a recent break-up and the source of Amy’s affliction. But the details matter little, since the virus tends to manifest itself as a deep, irreparable sense of disassociation. It’s the most frightening thing about She Dies Tomorrow – these characters don’t really scream or cry. Neither do they make bargains with their god. Instead, they act as if they’re already dead, wandering aimlessly or making decisions they never had the courage to before.

Although Seimetz relies on a few horror tropes, namely loud sounds and sudden cuts, the true dread of her film lies purely in what’s implied: who would we become if we could fully grasp the limits of our own mortality? “Humans are the only creatures who pretend to be what we’re not,” Jane muses. She Dies Tomorrow imagines what would happen if the mask finally slipped.