The Dead Don’t Die is chock full of grizzly, unique zombie kills, and co-stars Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny picked out their favorites for Comicbook.com.
Warning! Spoilers for The Dead Don’t Die are ahead!
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The Dead Don’t Die hit theaters this week, and Driver and Sevigny sat down with Comicbook.com ahead of time. When asked what their favorite zombie kills in the movie were, both had the answers right on the tips of their tongues.
“Selena Gomez,” Driver said without hesitation. “Right away.”
After pausing for a moment to laugh at how readily her co-star answered, Sevigny gave her answer right away as well.
“Carol Kane,” she said.
Both listed their favorite moments by actor, not character, but either way the scenes stand on their own. Gomez played Zoe, a young girl on a road trip with her friends, who just happened to blow into town right as the zombie apocalypse hit. Her death may have been one of the most symbolically significant of the entire film, revealing quite a bit about Driver’s character, Officer Ronnie Peterson, and his relationship with Sevigny’s character Officer Mindy Morrison.
When Zoe and her friends arrive at the movie, Ronnie notes that she is “part Mexican.” He assures the other police that he can tell because he has visited the country twice. He has a slightly unsettling, lingering gaze on her, and then he decides to warn her to stay in her motel room with the door locked.
It doesn’t work out, as Zoe and her friends are gutted by zombies a few scenes later. Ronnie and the other cops discover them too late, while they are dead but not yet turned into zombies. Still, Ronnie does not let it go that far. With unflinching savagery, he hacks off Zoe’s head and holds it up by the ponytail to present it to Mindy and Cliff (Bill Murray).
The scene is unsettling, as Zoe’s wound leaks real blood, not the black dust that comes out of true zombies. Mindy is horrified by Ronnies actions, but he does not seem to see the difference between dismembering a corpse or a zombie. This is when we see for sure that Ronnie lacks some critical empathy.
Meanwhile, Carole Kane never gets on screen alive in this film. She plays Mallory O’Brien, a middle-aged woman known for loving chardonnay. She is lying dead in a police holding cell for most of the movie, until she springs back to life later on. Mallory is a relatively harmless zombie, dreamily rasping “chardonnay” at the police. She is the first zombie Mindy sees for herself, and she watches Cliff botch the kill before Ronnie comes in with his trusty machete to take her out.
“Kill the head,” he advises over and over.
The Dead Don’t Die is a stand-out film in a crowded genre. The movie is in theaters now.
