She Dies Tomorrow plays out as a fever dream of doom ideation and reflection upon the nature of depression, but its central premise which sees the sudden notion that one is going to die the following day, infecting people like some sort of contagion, perhaps limits the film’s more serious implications.

The film’s cast – including (for lack of a better term) ‘protagonist’ Kate Lyn Sheil, as well as Jane Adams, Chris Messina and Tunde Adebimpe – are all truly fantastic in their respective roles as individuals who suddenly find themselves facing their own mortality. Following Sheil’s Amy (named for the director?) and then spreading outwards exponentially to other secondary characters, the film traces each individual’s own emotional and philosophical response to the idea of imminent death. From here the film plays out in a series of vignettes before ultimately circling back to Amy. Each performer gives it their all, imbuing the film with a panic-inducing quality which in several key scenes, really hits home. At other times, the film’s central premise feels like a rather masochistic exercise for viewer to undertake at the whim of the director.

Perhaps this simply isn’t the kind of film we need right now in the midst of a global pandemic, which has taken the lives of countless individuals; a time in which one’s mortality is constantly at the forefront of our minds. Perhaps it is…

What I found so frustrating about this film trying to pin down exactly what type of tone or message it was striving for. The film’s opening act, which primarily follows Amy, could be read at face value as a devastating, unflinching record of the effect of depression and anxiety upon a person.

Simultaneously, the character’s immediate interest in shopping online for a custom designed urn, binge-drinking, aimlessly wandering about her house and a seemingly bucket-list driven dirt-buggy ride in the desert, all accompanied by the melodramatic repetition of Mozart’s ‘Lacrimosa’, which Amy plays again and again on her turntable, colours the film as a bleak and absurdist satire rather than a serious contemplative work.

It was only when I read it in this light that I found it discursively engaging, but if we are to take it at face value, which I can’t help but feel was the intention, it amounts to little more than a feature length student film, musing upon life and death through cliché and melodrama, producing something we would expect of a burgeoning artist still learning their craft, an artist who would later grow beyond such trappings and tropes.