Every year the SXSW Film & TV Festival Headliner section gets more and more genre film-centric, and the 2026 edition is no different. Among this year’s big ticket selections is Jorma Taccone’s Over Your Dead Body, an English-language adaptation of Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 black comedy, The Trip. The story of an adversarial couple whose country vacation hides secrets plans that each has to murder the other, Taccone takes the main storyline of the original and tweaks it just enough to make this one a must-see and a rare remake worthy of your attention.
Commercial director Dan (Jason Segel) and his struggling actress wife Lisa (Samara Weaving) are going through a rough patch. Dan’s professional dissatisfaction with the banal nature of his job, and Lisa’s inability to land the kind of roles she wants to has really taken a toll on their romantic relationship, so maybe it’s time for a reset. A quick trip to their country house in upstate New York seems like just the thing to get them back on track, but they both have ulterior motives for this remote vacation, they want each other dead, and this will be the perfect chance to make it look like an accident. However, when a trio of fugitives make an unexpected appearance, it throws their duel into chaos as they now have to try to find a way to survive together or not at all.
Wirkola’s The Trip was one of my favorite films of 2021, a blisteringly violent comedy with a real mean streak that presented surprises at every turn. So, when Over Your Dead Body was announced for an American remake, my hackles were immediately up. Part of the joy in The Trip was the no-fucks-given attitude that I couldn’t imagine would survive the translation. Thankfully, Taccone and his team of co-conspirators do not skimp on the surprises or the gore as this version of the film might be even more violent and surprising than the original.
One third of the comedy powerhouse The Lonely Island, alongside Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer (The Naked Gun), Taccone at first seems an odd fit for a film this violent, but the man really hits all the beats and leaves no limb unbroken in this shockingly brutal adaptation. The casting of Samara Weaving as the shrewish Lisa is hilariously perfect as she balances an absolutely seething hatred for her limp noodle of a husband with a flair for survival horror that she’s been honing for years in such classics as Ready or Not, Mayhem, Borderline, Azrael, The Babysitter, and on and on. Segel’s Dan makes for a perfect cuckolded foil for Weaving’s vicious attacks, a milquetoast frump who just wants to get on with a life after Lisa.
The intrusion of their surprise houseguests, played by the impossibly charismatic Timothy Olyphant, a feral Juliette Lewis, and gentle giant Keith Jardine, puts Lisa and Dan on their heels, and kicks the story into high gear. Yes, the film trades on a lot of the same beats that the original film executed incredibly well, but there’s a unique sense of humor here that comes directly form the interplay between Taccone’s savvy direction and a fantastic script from Nick Ball and John Niven, that turns Over Your Dead Body into its own beast.
From the opening introduction of Dan hilariously over-explaining his wife’s dangerous solo hiking trip into the woods that he will definitely not be on to everyone that will listen, it’s clear that the film is taking full advantage of this cast and their strengths. Though Weaving has paid her dues in this genre (and we love to see it), it is a lot of fun watching Segel play in the same sandbox, utilizing a gear I don’t think many knew he had. Throw in a fun minor role for Paul Guilfoyle as Dan’s emasculating father who insists that he “needs a war” to grow some balls, and Over Your Dead Body’s core cast of six are firing on all cylinders.
Fans of The Trip will find plenty of fun surprises in this comedy forward adaptation that never holds back on the blood and gore. Over Your Dead Body was not what I would ever expect from the man who directed Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, but there’s a sense of interplay between the violence and the comedy that just feels right. Uproariously funny, absolutely brutal in its disregard for the structural integrity of the human body, and lightning paced with jokes and stunts coming fast and furious, Over Your Dead Body is a definite winner for fans of bloodthirsty black comedy. This is definitely one that benefits from seeing it with an audience who came to have fun, but I can definitely see myself revisiting Over Your Dead Body at home the same way I do with Popstar and MacGruber.