Over Your Dead Body (2026) – Review

In this day and age, it seems that you can make a comedy about anything, even when playing with the most unfunny of circumstances. Take Over Your Dead Body, for example, the Amazon Prime remake of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian thriller, The Trip, that tries to wring some dark laughs out of that laugh-a-minute genre, the home invasion movie. Whether you’re Straw Dogs or some similar, nail biting flick that sees relatively normal people being forced to fight for their lives due to violent intruders, chuckles tend to be in short supply, but does that mean that Jorma Taccone of the Lonely Island is doomed to fail?
With the comedic talents of Samara Weaving and Jason Segel backing him up and a trio of psychos played by Tomothy Olyphant, Juilette Lewis and former MMA fighter Keith Jardine, can this movie leech pitch black chuckles from a sub-genre whose main strength usually lay in being as disturbing as it possibly can.

Whatever love that used to exist within the marriage of Dan and Lisa Burton has long since curdled as we are introduced to them at seemingly their lowest ebb. Dan, a film director by trade, once helmed an acclaimed movie only to find himself now shooting pop-up ads while Lisa is a struggling actress; but their relationship has soured so much that they can barely stand to be in the same room together for any extended period of time without the conversation descending into vitriolic snark.
That’s why Dan has made the rather extreme decision to murder his wife and plans to do it during a weekend trip to his father’s lakeside cabin under the pretext of a hiking accident. Having set up a perfect day where he’s cooked her what he assumes is her favorite meal (it isn’t), he’s all set to do the deed with a chloroform soaked rag and a pile of gaffer tape; but before he can set his grim plan in motion, it turns out that Lisa’s had a similar idea. Also sick of this lifeless relationship with an older man who remains incredibly unsure of himself, she’s decided to put her own murder-plot into action while being utterly clueless to the fact that her husband wants to kill her too.
But after their individual plots violently collide, it turns out that there’s a third element in play that could prove to be lethal to them both. Lurking in the attic of the place are escaped violent criminals Pete and Todd and Pete’s girlfriend, Allegra, a former corrections officer who helped free them. Discovered when a violent brawl between husband and wife leads to a sheltering Todd getting shot in the butt, matters shift from Lisa and Dan’s battle to the death to a full-on home invasion as the three criminals are desperate for money.
Even if the Burtons manage to survive their hopeless predicament and vanquish the trio of mad dogs that hold them hostage, what will it mean for a couple who were actively trying to murder each other barely hours before?

Maybe it’s more of an indication of how my sense of humour works rather than how funny Over Your Dead Body actually is, but despite a few issues, I found this incredibly violent farce pretty funny. It certainly helps that one of the leads is already a veteran of exceedingly brutal survival movies (who the Hell would think it’s a good idea to take out Samara Weaving when there’s two whole Ready Or Not movies that exist that show us that it’s practically impossible to do) and the other is well versed at making failing relationships funny (tip of the hat to Forgetting Sarah Marshal’s Jason Segel), but unsurprisingly, the movie doesn’t really manage to get full traction until it’s far more gruesome second half. Up until the point when the villains of the piece are literally dropped into the story, the film mostly tries to delve deeply into the habits of two people who cannot stand the sight of each other any more. The character beats are sound as both Weaving and Segel play frustrated wife and sad sack husband respectively, and the script takes the time to load every interaction with little details and nuances to forshadow what’s about to occur. However, while the actors and their skills at comic timing yield solid results, it’s a little weird that the film is trying so hard to wring laughs out of a man desperately wanting to kill and dismember his wife when she doesn’t actually seem actively that horrible. Murderous tendencies aside, Lisa maybe a little abrasive, but she’s hardly a queen of the harpies that’s pushed her weak, mild mannered man too far, and conversely while Dan may admittedly be a whiny little bitch, he hardly deserves a face-full of shotgun either. Also, while it’s good for a couple of laughs, Taccone’s choice to use deliberately jarring flashbacks to get us up to speed with various shock twists feels a bit derivative of (and inferior to) the likes of Zac Cregger’s Barbarian.

However, matters get significantly less awkward when the squabbling couple have to learn to work together once more thanks to the arrival of murderous convicts making the pace pick up and some mighty spiteful slapstick come into play. Going out of his way to assure us that he’s not going to approach things with a soft touch, Taccone not only delivers a ton of wince-inducing gore (shotgun mangled toes; multiple stab wounds; chunks bitten out of noses), but even contains an extended scene where Segel has to fend off being raped by the hulking Todd as a form of torture – however, the character based quirks still manage to raise a smirk, especially when you realise that some of the antagonists are cheekily riffing on their past glories. Not only is Juliette Lewis digging into her inner Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers as the savage Allegra (“It’s Italian.”) but you feel that if Timothy Olyphant’s Mickey Altieri had somehow managed to survive Scream 2, there’s a very good chance that he might have matured into becoming charismatic thrill-killer Pete Jacob Hughes.
A spirited second half that sees a death by lawnmower, bizarre last minute saves by random characters and some neat physical gags (Lisa having to use multiple knives to subdue an attacker is a good one) prove to be incredibly fun if you love a spot of ludicrous bloodletting, however, nice touches and perfectly timed gouts of blood alone aren’t enough to ensure that Over Your Dead Body is much more than just temporarily diverting streaming fare. While they’re all-in for the action and can deliver quips in their sleep, both Segel and Weaving seem to be mostly operating at half-strength and while the film certainly has more personality than your average direct to streaming effort (bonus points for the “streaming movies are real movies” gag), the final result isn’t as raucous or surprising as you’d hope despite basically being Straw Dogs meets Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

While certainly funny, there’s a sense that Over Your Dead Body is stuck spinning it’s wheels until that blood starts flying. But while the home invasion plot is darkly fun thanks to some energetic villains, the central, love/hate parts of the plot prove to be less full-bloodied then the parts that contain actual blood.
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