Guest Post: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)

Imagine If LOST Took Place at a Norms

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die could have been a piercing satire. Instead, the current apocalyptic comedy settles for scattered brilliance. The film is packed with provocative ideas and anchored by a game cast, but director Gore Verbinski’s tone veers wildly off, and the climax falls flat like a plate of frozen nachos.

A zany, manic stranger (Sam Rockwell) storms into a Norms diner with a bomb strapped to his body, claiming the world is ending. He insists he has time traveled to this exact moment, and this same group of customers, countless times before. Each time, his mission fails, forcing him to blow himself up and start over. This round, he’s altering the variables, recruiting different diners to join his mission to stop AI from destroying the planet. Is he insane, prescient, or both? With no proof beyond his frantic conviction, those dragged along must risk their lives on the word of a man who may be either a time cowboy or a complete lunatic.

Screenwriter Matthew Robinson, who co-authored the charmingly intimate yet epic horror comedy Love and Monsters, brings a similar sense of whimsy amidst the gore. His characters have real bite, and the script doesn’t shy away from provocative territory - America’s frighteningly blasé response to school shootings, youth’s obsession with social media, and an exhausted humanity that would rather be swallowed by the Matrix than confront the real world. Unfortunately, these ideas never coalesce into a satisfying or meaningful conclusion.

The talented cast does its best to keep the humor dry and grounded. Rockwell, reliable as ever, channels his frenetic energy into something genuinely funny. Juno Temple is both pained and hopeful as a mother fiercely protective of her clone child, while Haley Lu Richardson, drifting through the chaos in a grimy princess dress, seems intentionally checked out yet remains oddly compelling.

I’ve always been a Verbinski fan. Pirates of the Caribbean redefined what audiences expected from a theme-park adaptation, The Ring was a model of tight construction, and even his much-maligned The Mexican was brilliantly subversive. Here, though, he loses control of the wheel - and the whole thing careens off a cliff. It is possible to satirize flippancy without being flippant, but that’s exactly the trap Verbinski falls into, and it grows tiresome fast.

With a surer directorial hand, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die could have been a classic end-of-the-world comedy. Instead, it’s as lost as its characters. Early in the film, Zazie Beetz asks, “Are you high?” It’s a fair question - one that could just as easily be directed at the filmmakers.