Photosensitivity Warning: The climax of the film includes an extended sequence of flashing that may prove triggering for photosensitive individuals. Take precautions.
“Information devours its own content. It devours communication and the social.”
– Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation from the chapter “The Implosion of Meaning in the Media.”
There was once a belief that an informed populace would be a smart populace, thereby encouraging wide-spread access to information. The problem is that information access has been confused for intelligence with the ability to pull information from the internet as the only barometer for acumen and not whether or not the information is (a) understood and (b) accurate. Now, practically everyone thinks they’re an expert because the black mirror in their pocket tells them so; a local problem turned global with the widespread and corporate-backed push for artificial intelligence in everything which creates opportunities for the truth to be warped and falsehoods heralded as fact. Through darkly comic hilarity, brutal satire of consumer culture, and a surprising mix of philosophical questions related to identity and technology, director Gore Verbinski’s (The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die may be the most amalgamation of 2026 we’ll get and absolutely the one we need: catharsis and all.
Center: Sam Rockwell as The Man from the Future in GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE. Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.
As customers sit enjoying their evening at Norm’s, a diner in Los Angeles, a man (Sam Rockwell) wearing a collection of seemingly trash-like items bursts in, declares himself from the future on a mission to save humanity, and informs the collection of customers that he’s looking for volunteers to join him in his quest. Reluctantly and with a great deal of skepticism, seven do join him, embarking on a quest that has to be survived and too wild to be believed.
The best way to enjoy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (GLHFDD) is by knowing as little as possible going in. What follows will try to keep the review as spoiler-free as possible, but there’re ways for impressions to be formed through the negative space of what follows or through the references made. So, proceed with caution, adventurer.
Still here? Say it with me then: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
GLHFDD is an amalgamation of several concepts and narrative tropes swirled together into a bombastic rollercoaster ride. Discussing the film in a spoiler-free context is going to be tough, but it’s not impossible, sort of like the Man from the Future’s (Rockwell) quest. Written by Matthew Robinson (Love & Monsters; Dora and the Lost City of Gold), GLFHDD borrows from the old, weaving them together with the new, so that audiences can either buckle in for a satirical ride that seems powered by the “old man yells at cloud” meme or opt to probe the satirical sci-fi comedy as it explores humanity’s relationship with technology; a relationship that’s turned parasitic with humanity approaching the tipping point of the short end.
L-R: June Temple as Susan, Zazie Beetz as Janet, Michael Peña as Mark, Sam Rockwell as The Man from the Future, Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, and Asim Chaudhry as Scott in GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE. Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.
Through the first lens, GLHFDD is a tale of human survival in which a group of randos are drafted to save humanity by a possible wack-a-doo dressed in the latest Derelicte fashion. Heck, the name of the film itself is a reference to what some video gamers say to each other before playing; though that may be a creation for the film versus real life as I’ve yet to find independent confirmation. If it is true, it’s a bit of whimsy indicative of a generation in which humor is the preferred salve, especially when getting ready to compete in a digital space in which almost nothing is won or gained in the physical sense beyond (one hopes) a good time. It does, however, speak to the type of film that Verbinski seeks to create, one in which humor and violence go hand-in-hand with fictional stakes that may result in death that only matters within the scope of the runtime (just like when entering a gaming session). Is the time spent meaningful? Does it matter? That depends — did you have fun? It’s chaos with the aim of entertainment and it achieves this by borrowing from an assortment of generational hits in which teenagers are terrible creatures who wield their sharp tongues and intent stares to cut their elders to the quick because, by sheer luck of having been born first, the elders are outdated, out-modded, and helplessly irrelevant. The amusing thing here is, while certain segments of GLHFDD had this Xennial singing “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance to myself (especially as a former community college adjunct), there isn’t much that separates the claims of this generational divide (as presented) from any other except that the younger generation presented on screen is among the first to have never known a world without digital access, where streaming wasn’t the norm, where information wasn’t at one’s fingertips, and where the integration of entertainment and commerce wasn’t anywhere near as blurred or unprotected. So, on the one hand, when we’re shown a classroom of students staring at their phones instead of paying attention to their sub, portrayed by Lost City of Gold’s Michael Peña, the first instinct is to presume that we’re meant to side with the bookish sub, frustrated by the seeming obsession with scrolling online instead of engaging with the real world. In that moment, though, right before Peña’s Mark accidentally sets an incident in motion, Verbinski holds on what he sees the student scrolling through, a video app reminiscent of TikTok or Meta’s Reels which offers a stream of clips of ridiculousness that very quickly turns into stomach-churning horrors of digital creation. It’s a commentary on the real digital pipeline many algorithms operate from in which innocuous viewing material is slowly transitioned into more aggressive, often right-leaning and ethnocentric materials. One isn’t really even aware that they’ve begun to receive indoctrinating material until it’s too late. In this sequence, Verbinski entertains, playing on expected tropes of generational miscommunication and the strange assumption that those who came before us got it wrong and so will the ones after us (perhaps the only consistent thing in each generational handover), but, if one is willing to look deeper, Verbinski and Robinson aren’t yelling at the clouds, they’re screaming at us to wake up.
This brings us to the second lens.
L-R: Asim Chaudhry as Scott, June Temple as Susan, Michael Peña as Mark, Sam Rockwell as The Man from the Future, Zazie Beetz as Janet, and Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid in GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE. Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.
If you’re any kind of media consumer, GLHFDD is going to read familiar from the jump. A film with a protagonist claiming to be a time traveler wearing a garbage outfit using violence to save humanity (12 Monkeys) in which the great adversary is a piece of technology (The Matrix; The Terminator) that can only be defeated using a precise set of heroes (Legend of the Eight Samurai). Not to mention the fact that the biggest battle these heroes must face is the realization that their world is manufactured (Thirteenth Floor; Josie and the Pussycats) as corporations seek to profit off problems instead of crafting a proper solution (Sorry to Bother You) and, if they can’t succeed, then all of humanity is doomed to become slaves to an uncontrollable digital master (The Mitchells vs. The Machines). However, this film goes even deeper than that, borrowing from Greek philosopher Aristotle’s theory of causality, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” which has given rise to the modern concept of Simulation Theory. None of these are particularly new concepts and all serve as the foundation for what Robinson’s script ends up exploring. As they overlap, Verbinski uses them in differing (sometimes supportive, sometimes combative) ways to illustrate the slippery slope humanity has found itself on regarding the ways they interpret technology as a solution to problems rather than addressing the actual problem. As a specific example, a specifically American problem is offered a solution in-film through bio-technology which seeks to replace what was taken and is generally treated, by the characters, as the expected and serviceable solution. It does nothing to address the actual problem nor does it address the fallout of the problem, but — within the scope of the film — highlights how if a buck is to be made off of someone’s suffering, not only will one be mined until a corpse is a husk, but the replacement provided will have inescapable ads. As if on cue, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outside of the film, out here in the real world, has announced that it will no longer make determinations based on the injury or death tolls but on how much it will cost the business to address it. Read that back — the EPA will focus on whether the cost is too high for a business to address the harm it’s doing to the environment and not whether or not people are getting hurt. It’s commerce and consumption over ethical living. Not a single problem will be solved with this shift, but you can bet that a few rich individuals will only grow richer. To that end, the line of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” transitions a wish of good luck in the digital world between players and is something uttered with a shrug as one ventures out into the real world. But what even is the real world when the entire system seems designed to see individuals fall? The film doesn’t get into this or the fact that the “broken” system *is* functioning as designed, but that’s neither here nor there. What is here is that Robinson and Verbinski balance heart and humor on a razor’s edge on which all get cut because that’s just the cost of doing business these days. Several times throughout the course of GLHFDD, the script veers into nihilistic territory, using satire in an effort to provoke a reaction out of its audience — Do you agree? Do you dissent? How far are you willing to go? At what point is the implausible real and how do you define yourself with this new information? – without ever once talking down to them. It’s a heck of a balancing act which never lets up, whether anchored by human emotion or comprised entirely of the absurd.
Sam Rockwell as The Man from the Future in GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE. Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die isn’t going to be for everyone and it doesn’t try to be. You’re welcome to enjoy it as an absurdist trifle or a philosophical jaunt from which to spend hours excavating intention. For this reviewer, possibly because I earned a minor in Philosophy from UNC at Asheville (Go, Bulldogs), I’m going to do both. One can easily marvel at Rockwell’s charismatic performance which feels like a mix of prior characters Mr. Right (Mr. Right), Billy Bickle (Seven Psychopaths), and Mr. Wolf (The Bad Guys), while also feeling the weight of despair and hope that Juno Temple (Ted Lasso; Killer Joe) brings as reluctant hero Susan. Here again, there’s plenty that this review didn’t cover in an effort to keep all the fun and surprises unique to your experience. But one thing is certain, as incredulous a tale as it seems, in the wake of recent digital creations and the all-or-nothing move by tech investors and U.S. government officials to push for artificial intelligence incorporation into everything, a future comprised of unthinking, all-consuming meat sacks is not too far off a reality.
In theaters February 13th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die website.
Final Score: 5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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