It’s been nearly a decade since director Gore Verbinski’s last movie, 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, and his dynamic visual style, impish sense of humor, and general prevailing oddness have been sorely missed in mainstream Hollywood. Here comes the creatively titled Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which is accompanied by cheering children shouting he title whenever it appears onscreen. It’s a satirical sci-fi parable with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. At 134 minutes, it plays like an entire season of Black Mirror episodes hung together with a wacky time travel adventure caper. Sam Rockwell plays The Man From the Future, actually his character name, though he looks like a scraggly hobo when he stumbles into a diner wrapped in trash and what appears to be a bomb. He uncorks a hyperactive speech informing the patrons he is from the future, that future is very bad thanks to technology, and he has come to this diner over 100 times previously because he is convinced within this eatery is some combination of the right people that will help him ensure this nightmare future never comes to be. Immediately, the screenplay by Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Love & Monsters) grabs you and refuses to let go, bouncing off the walls with ideas, gags, and manic energy mixed with trenchant commentary about the perils of technology in our crushing age of doom scrolling and diversion. Even better, the movie keeps shifting and surprising every so often. The structure is broken into a series of extended vignettes showcasing different members of the team and their personal back-stories, each treated like its own Black Mirror episode covering some different nefarious aspect of modern technology, from a school of student zombies addicted to their cell phones to a secret program that clones deceased children for the right price, though the government foots the bill if your kid was a victim in a school shooting. You can see the mordant tone and perspective of the movie. It gets dark but at no point is it suffocated by that darkness. Instead, Verbinski keeps things sure-footed and breezy, relying upon slapstick, goofy humor, sudden bloody violence, and layered revelations to maintain a consistent sense of entertainment. I don’t think there’s an emotional investment in the movie, and a very late revelation feels like a hasty attempt to force some in when that ship has sailed. I don’t mind that the film’s tone can be rather snide because its aim is strident anti-A.I. satire. It’s also easy to feel that many of the supporting players don’t get as much to do as they’re dragged along on this quest, especially after Zazie Beetz showed how capable she was as a formidable action heroine with They Will Kill You. Still, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a gonzo, violent, inventive, macabre whirlwind that invites the audience to laugh at the chaos and downturn of modern society. Hey, watching this screen is actually part of the solution, not the problem.

Nate’s Grade: B+