She’s Dead is listed as Horror on imdb. I don’t think that is entirely accurate. Of course there are horrific themes, death and how to dismember and get rid of a corpse. There is even a fair amount of blood on occasion. But I find the whole thing so absurd, that I feel like black comedy is the only way to actually describe the thing. What does that leave us with? Horror-Comedy?
It’s captivating already from the start. A guy wakes up and apparently finds a dead woman in the house. He doesn’t know what to do so he panics, trying to cut the body off with a… backsaw. It must have very dull teeth, because he has obviously not been very successful. So he called his friend to ask him to get rid of the body. And this is where we are let into the story.
The whole thing is so absurd that it is just laughable, in a good way that is and I think it’s totally intentional. I also think that the dialog is sharp and the cinematography is very inventive. We get to see these guys talking about the corpse and how to dispose of it. Methods and tools to be used for a proper dismemberment and how the economic transaction is going to be made. During this whole time the camera doesn’t really show us the body. It shies away and keeps it just outside the frame. I think it’s brilliant. We know there’s a female corpse but we don’t know how it looks. We have to imagine it ourselves. The best way to tell a story.
The room itself is covered in plastic and there are almost no colors. It’s just white and pale which brings a clinical cold image to the story. Neither of them seem very concerned that they are dealing with a corpse. They don’t really care who she is or how she died. That is in stark contrast to what I would imagine myself doing if I found a dead woman in my house when I woke up. Of course, I wouldn’t try to dismember it or dispose of the body either. I’d call the police…
You can tell something is off. There is something to the story that they’re not telling us yet. I get the impression that they will hold off until the end of the film. I anticipated some kind of twist ending. And there is. Several really, but it’s hard talking about them without spoiling the surprise. I think I figured it out just before it was performed on screen but I wasn’t sure until the very last moment before. There are telltales before, and things that seem like obvious mistakes early on suddenly actually make sense.
I have no way of knowing if these “mistakes” were intentional or not but at least they’re explained by the chain of events in the latter half of the movie. Oh, and there comes another friend later on and he has some “unusual” ideas what to do with the body. After all, it is a beautiful young lady laying on the floor with nothing but her underwear on. You’ll have to imagine the rest. But even these moments in the film are so absurd that they’re funny rather than horrifying or disgusting. It’s made with class and finesse!
She’s Dead is just about an hour long and I think that is just about the right amount of time to be able to tell the story. If it had been longer I don’t think the tension of uncertainty would have worked. And if it had been shorter it would have felt rushed.
It was an exciting inventive film where it’s, once again, proven that less very often is more!
