She Dies Tomorrow
One of the things I have struggled most with over the years is catastrophic feelings- going to the worst, possible scenario. If I can’t get a hold of my mother- has she died? If I don’t receive a reply back from someone- did I do or say something wrong? When I do something wrong at work- will I get fired? More often than not, the answer to all of these questions is, no, but I often have a hard time getting myself to believe that in the moment. We do not know why Amy thinks she is going to die, but she feels it with absolute certainty, to the point where, she cannot entertain any other way of thinking. To say that Amy Seimetz’s “She Dies Tomorrow” resonated with me is an understatement.
The film begins, and ends, with Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil). She has moved into a new house, and is trying to settle in, but she has this nagging feeling about life. She feels like she’s going to die tomorrow. She gets in touch with her friend Jane (Jane Adams), who is concerned for her friend. Soon after her visit, Jane starts feeling like she’s going to die tomorrow, as well, and when she goes to a birthday part for her sister-in-law, the guests start feeling the same, and on, and on, and on. This is probably not the best movie to watch for a global pandemic where we have to be concerned about infecting one another with an invisible illness.
It’s often said that our mindset is contagious- that however we feel, we project to our interactions with other people, and whatever we project will be how others view us. That’s the obvious symbolism at work in Seimetz’s film, but I think the more impactful, more experiential element in “She Dies Tomorrow” is how it shows us the internal struggle its characters deal with, and how a constant feeling of anxiety, and that nothing matters in our actions, consumes our life when it takes hold. Our life feels like it’s at a standstill, and we are paralyzed into inaction, in a lot of ways. The pinpoint accuracy with which Seimetz dramatizes this in her film makes me think she understands exactly how her characters feel, because she’s been there herself. It’s sometimes difficult for cinema that really express emotions without it feeling like performance; “She Dies Tomorrow” is as authentic an experience of anxiety onscreen as I’ve ever seen.
There’s a lot of visual ways Seimetz and her cinematographer, Jay Keitel, help accentuate the emotional turmoil plaguing the characters in the film, which the poster hints at, but some of the most haunting imagery in the film simply exists by showing the characters at key moments. A son and his girlfriend visiting his father at the hospital. A couple in the living room while their child struggles with their own sense of mortality, while they themselves struggle. Jane coming into a room, while her outfit is covered with blood. Amy, alone, in the desert. This is a powerful evocation of an individual internal struggle that isn’t often seen in film, because it’s so difficult to project that without delving into melodrama. While there are times the film reminded me of some of the most terrifying surreal moments of David Lynch, Seimetz is often content to just show us, without artifice, a struggle to exist that many of us feel, but have a hard time putting into words. It’s a stark, but vital, vision of the world, and one that we all have moments where we have to reckon with it, and understand that no, more often than not, the worst is not going to happen.
What happens if we cannot recognize that, though? It’s a struggle we’ve all had, at times. Unfortunately, some of us never figure out a way out. We wonder if any of the characters in this film will.
