The Dead Don’t Hurt—Or Maybe They Do, But Only to Boring People

Let me preface this by saying, I had no idea what this movie was about, and after watching it, I’m still not sure. Directed by Viggo Mortensen—yes, that Viggo, of “I’m-the-King-of-Gondor” fame—The Dead Don’t Hurt is a film that can only be described as an avant-garde attempt to make you think you’re watching a Western, when in fact, you’re watching a history lesson in “How Not to Tell a Story.”

Mortensen stars as “Some Dutch Guy,” because when you think Civil War-era America, you immediately picture a wandering Dutchman who’s in no hurry to explain why he’s there. He meets a Canuck woman (because why not? The scriptwriters clearly didn’t care about historical boundaries, and neither should you). They marry, build a life, and presumably spend their evenings in a quaint log cabin pondering the existential mysteries of how this script got greenlit.

The plot—if you want to call it that—makes less sense than a drunk historian’s ramblings. It’s like someone threw a handful of Civil War-era plotlines into a blender and hit “random.” The timeline jumps around with the grace of a toddler on a sugar high, flipping between scenes with no rhyme, reason, or even a helpful subtitle like “Three Years Ago” or “Present Day.” Maybe that’s part of the genius? The filmmakers figured you’d spend so much time trying to figure out where you are, you wouldn’t notice that nothing actually happens.

We start in the middle of the movie with a dramatic shooting, only for the wrong guy to get hung for it. Classic small-town conspiracy, you’d think? But nope, the conspiracy leads absolutely nowhere. They forgot the part where conspiracies are supposed to be, you know, interesting. But don’t worry, Mortensen’s Dutch Guy does the only reasonable thing: he goes off to fight in the Civil War. Sure, leave your Canuck wife alone in a sketchy town full of sketchier dudes. What’s the worst that could happen? Spoiler: Horribly assaulted by the shooter from earlier in the film, except that shooting happens in the future. From this horrendous attack, we get what I believe is maybe the tenth person who has any lines in the film.

Meanwhile, the film jumps back and forth between scenes of Dutch Guy and Canuck Wife building their life—because nothing screams romance like a disjointed story full of inexplicable pauses. Think of it as the most incoherent home video you’ve ever seen, except with more sepia-toned sadness. And what’s a Civil War movie without some war scenes? Mortensen, clearly longing for his glory days as Aragorn, trots off to battle with all the intensity of a guy who’s mildly annoyed but forgot why.

Just when you think the confusion might be leading to something profound, we stumble into the final act, which is a budget-friendly version of The Road. You know, that post-apocalyptic film where Viggo Mortensen walked around with a kid in gray filters, looking depressed? Yeah, they basically remade that here. But this time, instead of dealing with actual stakes, we’re left wondering if The Dead Don’t Hurt is just a metaphor for how emotionally numb we’re supposed to feel by the end of this film.

And let’s not forget the kid. There’s always an annoying kid in these types of movies, isn’t there? I guess Viggo Mortensen’s contract mandates a small child for him to emotionally scar over the course of 120 minutes.

Final verdict: 5/10. I mean, the film might actually be good for people who enjoy spending two hours staring at dust while listening to Dutch accents and random gunfire. But for the rest of us, it’s about as stimulating as watching paint dry in the middle of a war reenactment. The dead might not hurt, but this movie certainly does.

*Please be advised, the previous review contains spoilers and affiliate links*