by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
Gore Verbinski’s Chaotic Time-Travel Satire Has Bite
A group of strangers launch a wild and raucous assault on a rogue artificial intelligence program in Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
A strangely dressed man stumbles into a Norm’s Diner late one night and declares, with absolute seriousness, that he is a time traveler from the future. He claims he has made the journey 117 times, each attempt an effort to stop a rogue artificial intelligence program that will one day seize control of humanity. His story sounds unhinged, and the patrons treat it as such, but there is something frantic and wounded in his plea that captures the attention of a few curious, aimless regulars.
They are not convinced he is sane, but they are intrigued enough, or perhaps desperate enough, to volunteer for his mission. Before this eccentric visitor can begin shaping a ragtag collection of strangers into a world-saving strike team, he must first manage the simple, immediate challenge of getting them out of the diner alive.
Written by Matthew Robinson, best known for Love and Monsters and Black Box, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die stars Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, Asim Chaudhry, and Juno Temple. The film is directed by Gore Verbinski, whose trademark flair for spectacle and surreal world-building is on full display.
Verbinski made his name with the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, and he continues to excel in narratives that allow reality to buckle under the weight of imagination. His best work places an eccentric figure at the center of a heightened environment and surrounds that figure with an ensemble of characters who are just grounded enough to keep the madness coherent. In this film, he returns to that formula with infectious energy.
Sam Rockwell delivers a performance that manages to be wildly funny and deeply haunted at the same time. His time-traveling soldier arrives with a sense of exhaustion, obsession, and manic purpose. He channels the intensity of classic sci-fi heroes like those in The Terminator franchise, yet the comparison ends at the premise. The world Robinson and Verbinski present is not sleek or futuristic. It is grimy, cynical, and unsettlingly familiar.
The visual language suggests a society teetering on collapse, which raises an unnerving question about the future this man is trying so desperately to change. If this is the starting point, what horrors wait ahead?
The narrative unfolds through a loosely Rashomon-inspired structure. Each member of the makeshift team recalls the series of events that brought them to the diner that night. These vignettes give the story an unexpected emotional center. The characters are absurd, strange, and at times ridiculous, yet their confessions are authentic enough to ground the film in real human longing and disappointment. That blend of sincerity and absurdity is one of the film’s greatest strengths.
Robinson’s script and Verbinski’s direction work in harmony as they dismantle genre expectations. The tone shifts with deliberate unpredictability, alternating between comedy, horror, action, and satire. The visual palette is bold and unrefined, leaning into a sense of chaos that mirrors the film’s thematic concerns.
It is a movie that mocks society’s complacency with everyday violence, particularly school shootings, and criticizes the way people use technology as both escape and prison. Teachers act as supervisors of digital dependence rather than educators. Screens dominate attention in every environment. The critique is not subtle, but it is sharp and resonant.
Rated R for pervasive language, violence, grisly images, and brief sexual content, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a wild and unruly commentary on modern anxieties. It is funny, abrasive, clever, and strangely heartfelt. Its imperfections are part of its personality, and its refusal to follow a conventional path is exactly what makes it compelling. Chaotic in the best sense, it is a time-travel adventure comedy with real bite.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die opens in theaters on February 13, 2026.
Grade: C+
