Death Becomes Her: You Either Commit or It Loses You

“Bottoms up!” You either go all in with Death Becomes Her or not at all.

For a while, it resists you. The tone feels slippery. The pacing wobbles. You’re not quite sure what it wants to be. And then it clicks. That sudden “Ah” moment where everything snaps into place and the film effectively tells you: you should learn not to compete with me. I always win.

From that point on, it does.

I can see why the reviews were mixed. If you approach this with a raised eyebrow, it will lose you quickly. The film does not take itself seriously, and it has no interest in meeting you halfway. Instead, it commits fully to its own absurdity, growing more theatrical, more ridiculous, more knowingly artificial as it goes.

Meet it there, and it works.

Yes, the effects look of their time. But they are inventive, committed, and pushed just far enough to keep the joke alive. There is a confidence to them, a refusal to hold back, that carries the film through moments that should not work on paper.

To the critics, I am tempted to say: I will not speak to you ’til you put your head on straight. This is not a film that rewards detachment. It is cynical, whimsical, and just twisted enough to make its central premise feel uncomfortably plausible. Who wouldn’t be tempted by eternal youth?

That is where it lingers.

Because beneath the spectacle, there is something sharper at play. Watching it now, it feels less like a novelty and more like an early reflection of the culture we are now fully immersed in. Obsession with image. Fear of ageing. The quiet horror of becoming irrelevant.

The film just got there first, and had the nerve to laugh.

It is not flawless. The opening stretch takes its time to find the tone, and the balance between satire and farce occasionally slips. But once it locks in, it commits completely.

The ending brings everything full circle with a punchline that is as precise as it is absurd.

It is also telling that a film once met with mixed reception has found new life as a cult favourite, now feeding into a stage musical and a TikTok driven resurgence. That shift says as much about us as it does about the film.

This is not subtle. It is not restrained. It demands that you meet it on its own terms.

If you do, it does not just work.

It wins.