Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die review

Gore Verbinski’s new sci-fi film feels like the best Black Mirror episode since Netflix took over the franchise in 2015. Directed by Verbinski with a script from Matthew Robinson, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die stitches several Black Mirror–esque dystopian tech vignettes into a mostly coherent narrative.

Its central story — a time-traveling hero sent to the present to stop an AI apocalypse — wears unabashed Terminator influences, but Verbinski’s slapstick sensibility makes it both original and entertaining even as the final act grows messy. The film begins in a diner where Sam Rockwell arrives to warn patrons that an AI singularity is imminent.

Clothed in a transparent raincoat and a tangle of tubes and wires, he strides through the room, grabbing smartphones and sometimes hurling them — once into a boiling pot of soup — to underline his anti-technology warnings. Rockwell dominates the screen with an operatic, self-regarding flair that recalls Captain Jack Sparrow, a comparison Verbinski endorses.

gore verbinski, sam rockwell, matthew robinson, black mirror, netflix, ai apocalypse, ai singularity, time travel, terminator, slapstick