Gore Verbinski’s return to the big screen with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a madcap apocalyptic tale with some great characters that might be too cynical for its own good.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
Directed By: Gore Verbinski
Written By: Matthew Robinson
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple
Release Date: February 13, 2026
Crazy to think it’s been ten years since Gore Verbinski’s last film, A Cure For Wellness, but after a decade of being in “director jail” (which so many others deserved more than him), he’s back with something uniquely…him. Taking cues from his earlier comedies, the oddball charm of Rango, and the frenetic energy of his Pirates of the Caribbean films, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is filled with all manner of Verbinski’s filmmaking quirks.
It’s an interesting mix that swirls everything up into a unique story that manages to be highly engaging throughout its—overly long—run time. This same approach also holds it back a bit, where its excess prevents its thematic commentary from being as profound as it, clearly, wants to be.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here, let’s dive in a bit more!
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die puts the focus on an unnamed man from the future (Sam Rockwell) who travels to the past in hopes of saving humanity from a grim, AI-controlled future. More specifically, he keeps showing up at a local diner, knowing there’s an exact combination of patrons inside who will ensure his success.
Despite being a central conceit of the film’s plot, this isn’t a time-travel movie. Instead—like Rockwell’s character explains to the confused diners—it’s used more like a Groundhog’s Day loop. Every time he fails the mission, he simply restarts and tries out a new combination of recruits. The film kicks off at his 117th attempt, which has made him a bit…cynical. He hasn’t given up, but he’s less subtle/nuanced in how he approaches people.
The result is he sounds like a crazy person while enlisting, under threat of a bomb, some unwitting accomplices. Their goal is to travel across the town and reach a household where a nine-year-old child is on the precipice of giving birth to the artificial intelligence that eventually takes over the world; wiping out half the population. It seems like a simple task, but the path is fraught with peril. From masked hunters, giant-knife wielding hobos, to…well…literal cat monsters, the motley crew have their work cut out for them. And as Rockwell’s man from the future constantly reminds them, “not everyone makes it to the end.”
This main plot is broken up over a handful of character-specific vignettes. These offer a glimpse into the lives of these characters and the events leading up to them winding up in the diner. Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz) are school teachers who inadvertently stumble upon something strange happening to the children on their phones. There’s Susan (Juno Temple) dealing with the death of a child during a school shooting, where a hidden world of cloning is revealed to her. Then there’s Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) who has a very real allergy to cell phones and Wi-Fi.
Yeah, there’s a lot going on with these characters and the story in general. I won’t get into the specifics here, however, as there are a number of spoilers spread throughout. Suffice it to say, however weird you think this movie is…it manages to get weirder.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the absurdity inherent in many of its world-building elements goes a long way towards helping you simply accept the things you’re seeing play out on screen. On top of that, it helps sell much of the dark humor.
While Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die‘s madcap antics keeps the action and humor engaging to viewers, it’s almost too much for its own good. As it bounces from one absurd thing to another, the points it wants to make begin to feel like items being checked off a list, rather than thematic commentary.
The main plot itself, is relatively straightforward, but the script over-complicates it quite a bit. Managing to be both overstuffed and overlong as it seeks to pack in more monologue-driven social commentary. Which is frustrating because the points the film makes are important and poignant.
Hell, Susan’s story about losing her son to a school shooter could be an entire film in and of itself. Not only is she dealing with the death of her child, she struggles to understand the wild new culture of cloning she’s now apart of. The blasé way these parents deal with the—often repeated—deaths of their children and bringing them back in customized ways is fertile ground for examining how our society treats such horrific events…Yet in the film, it’s little more than a plot point for Susan that comes in handy in the finale.
At times, it feels like the film is more intent on bringing up themes than actually exploring them. Combine that aspect with how it ends (again, I won’t spoil things), the result is a movie that feels too cynical. Rather than offering a glimmer of hope for setting things right—although it’s final scene certainly tries to paint it that way—I was left feeling more like Rockwell’s time-traveler at the beginning. Jaded, chugging along after countless failures and almost unable to see the point in trying again.
There are a number of things I greatly enjoyed about Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. The action-adventure elements are a hoot; the cast of characters are unique and fun to learn about, with some excellent performances all around (although Zazie Beetz feels criminally underused); and the sci-fi craziness feels like something only Gore Verbinski could pull off. It’s just a bummer the message gets muddled down as the film’s excesses overshadow the points being made.
