There are a lot of competent movies that don't stand out in the contemporary Hollywood landscape. Most films piggyback similar ideas and exhausted franchises and viewers have to flip a coin to decide what to watch. It doesn't take much to draw attention in this rotten creative zeitgeist. He Never Died banked on an intriguing title and the surprising cast of Henry Rollins in the lead part in order to draw viewers in. And guess what? I've watched it over the slew of films in my Netflix waiting line this weekend and I liked the hell out of it. He Never Died might be a little goofy, but it's quite different and imaginative in its lack of budget.
Jack (Henry Rollins) is a social outcast who likes spend his days sleeping, playing bingo and eating at the same exact diner every goddamn day. Needless to say, there's something wrong with Jack. His life changes the day the nineteen years old daughter he didn't know about knocks at his apartment door. Andrea (Jordan Todosey) throws Jack's quiet balance out the window and out on the street again. See, Jack harbors a big secret. He's not gay or suffering from a terminal disease or anything like that. It's much more problematic than that and it's also in the movie title. Jack also depends on his pusher (Booboo Stewart) to feed him a certain substance to keep him normal and when he gets picked off the street by hired goons, Jack is forced into taking action.
So let's address the elephant in the room: how exactly good is Henry Rollins? Does the self-admitted "terrible actor" makes or breaks the movie? Turns out it was a very shrewd casting choice by writer and director Jason Krawczyk. I wouldn't be surprised if he had Rollins in mind when he wrote the screenplay because Jack's awkward truthfulness flows swiftly out of Rollins' mouth and lots of the movie hangs on his performance. Rollins delivers. I wouldn't agree with his own assessment that he's a terrible actor, but his dramatic range is indeed limited, yet both him and Jason Krawczyk were obviously aware of that during the filming of He Never Died. Henry Rollins made Jack both charming and intriguing without being obvious or cliché.
Yep. Charming and intriguing enough.
Another quirk of He Never Died I appreciated was its apparent self-awareness and creativity about its shoestring budget. It's an existential horror movie with a Coen-ian sense of humor at heart, yet it doesn't really have any spectacularly gory scenes. So, depending on who's point of view you decide to consider, He Never Died will be a radically different movie. It is very much a mystery for Jack, who's fighting invisible monsters in the street and in his head, but it's straight out cosmic horror for the mob who are fighting a timeless being who's seen worse shit than their puny firearms. Perhaps it is the only major weak spot of the movie, by the way: the mob angle. The resolution came out of nowhere a little bit. If you're going to make your movie a mystery, a little bit of foreshadowing is the best practice.
By any means, you should watch He Never Died. It is original, creative both in content and form and it doesn't take itself seriously. The narrative might not be perfect (the ending is a little bungled), but it has a stronger identity than most crap currently being produced and distributed. Henry Rollins is tailor made for the lead part and that fact alone should be enough to make you press play. Maybe the newfound cosmic horror fan in me liked it more than I should've, but it feels great to watch a movie that doesn't feature the sandpapered people of Hollywood. He Never Died is one of these "labor of love" movies, an original and cohesive vision untainted by the big studios and I'll take that any day of the year over The Bourne Whatever. Jason Krawczyk, you have my attention!