The zombie genre has evolved since George Romero's iconic Night of the Living Dead, itself a spin off earlier voodoo zombie tales. Didn't Die, which premiered Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, updates the genre for 2025 with equal senses of humor and humanity.
Vinita also gives a few somewhat tone-deaf monologues full of toxic positivity about how survivors should still get out and explore the world. This pays off later in the film when she admits she's not actually fine and gets real with the audience.
Vinita and her brother, Rish (Vishal Vijayakumar), brave the apocalypse to report on the world. At home, they live with their brother Hari (Samrat Chakrabarti) and his wife Barbara (Katie McCuen).
Barbara, of course, is an homage to the character in Night of the Living Dead, also referenced in the 2004 comedy Shaun of the Dead. Director Meera Menon and cinematographer Paul Gleeson, who co-wrote Didn't Die together, chose to film in black and white, adding another commonality with Romero's 1968 classic.
Vinita's podcast is a modern twist on the genre, as it seems likely in today's world that someone would podcast or vlog a real-life zombie apocalypse. Yet, Vinita uses radio waves to broadcast, and there is even a joke in the film about the technicalities of her calling the show a podcast.The film's most perceptive joke is about how podcast microphones make everyone's mouth sound wet. This is a common attribute of podcasts nobody ever seems to address on air.
In many zombie films, in-fighting between living humans usually proves more of a threat than the actual creatures. It is equally dramatic here, though a bit less hostile.
The baby awakens Barbara's maternal instincts and she wants to keep it, while Hari sees the infant as a liability, which may be valid.
Rish has never killed a biter since the apocalypse began, always passing the duties to Vinita or someone else. This shows not every survivor is a gung-ho hunter.
The biter attacks are filmed with a jerky, shaky camera style, making it difficult to see what is happening. But there are only a few such scenes because the characters are good at avoiding the creatures.
The human drama of the survivors is the focus of the film anyway. Didn't Die presents recognizable characters facing entertaining survival dilemmas, with the effective occasional comic relief.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.