Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026) Briarcliff/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure-Comedy RT: 134 minutes Rated R (pervasive language, violence, some grisly images, brief sexual content) Director: Gore Verbinski Screenplay: Matthew Robinson Music: Geoff Zanelli Cinematography: James Whitaker Release date: February 13, 2026 (US) Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton, Daniel Barnett, Dominique Maher, Adam Burton, Georgia Goodman.
Rating: ****
I almost didn’t see Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. The East Coast was slammed by a huge snow storm over the weekend. It was followed by sleet that turned the streets into a sheet of ice. My AMC was closed on Sunday and for part of Monday. I figured the Screen Unseen event schedule for that night was canceled. I resigned myself to staying in. When I saw that the theater would be operational after all, I decided to brave the icy conditions and see what cinematic goodie AMC was offering up this week. I’m so glad I did.
CULT FILM ALERT! That’s right, I’m sounding the alarm. We’ve got a cult film waiting to happen here. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3) and written by Matthew Robinson (Dora and the Lost City of Gold), Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is an insane hybrid of dystopian sci-fi, time travel adventure, action and comedy. It starts when a seemingly deranged man (Rockwell, Jojo Rabbit) bursts into an L.A. diner and announces he’s from the future. It causes the patrons to look up from their phones briefly. He goes on to say he’s here to stop an apocalyptic event with the help of some of the people gathered here tonight. Specifically, he’s looking for the right combination of people and has yet to find it. His mission has failed every time. This is his 118th try. He needs to get it right this time.
He certainly looks like one of those delusional homeless people forever carrying on about the end being near. Clad in a clear plastic raincoat with plastic tubes hanging all over him and sporting an unkempt beard, he appears to be an ideal candidate for a padded room at the local asylum. But he seems to know some of the patrons in the joint by name, rejecting some because he knows how it will end for them. He might be insane or he might not be. Either way, he has a job to do and it has to be done tonight.
The unnamed time traveler’s team consists of married high school teachers Mark (Pena, Ant-Man) and Janet (Beetz, Joker), grieving mother Susan (Temple, Venom: The Last Dance), suicidal party princess Ingrid (Richardson, Split), burly tough guy Scott (Chaudhry, People Just Do Nothing) and a few others. Their mission entails getting out of the diner with police surrounding the pace and making it six blocks to the home of the individual creating the AI device that will bring about the end of civilization and humanity by weaponizing everybody’s addiction to tech. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
In keeping with the story’s always off-kilter vibe, Verbinski doesn’t take a direct narrative route to the finish line. He pauses the action to provide backstories on some of the team members. They’re interesting and more importantly, relevant to what’s happening. On his first day at the school, Mark accidentally triggers an event when he touches a student’s phone. Pyramids appear on all the kids’ phones, putting them in a trance as they come after Mark and his less-than-pleased wife. We meet Susan right after her son is killed in a school shooting. Instead of a grief therapist, she’s referred by a group of smiling Stepford moms to a facility that can help her in a most unexpected and definitely creepy way.
The most interesting character of the bunch is Ingrid, a tech-adverse girl who gets nosebleeds every time she’s in close proximity to WiFi. Her boyfriend Tim (Taylor, House of the Dragon) stays away from it too. That is, until he becomes addicted to VR and leaves Ingrid to live in that world. It leaves her depressed and ready to end it all. That’s when fate comes knocking in the form of a self-proclaimed savior who looks like a crazy homeless guy.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is the movie I wish the highly overrated Everything Everywhere All at Once had been. It’s original, wildly irreverent and unapologetically bonkers. It’s obviously the work of a twisted mind (i.e. Robinson) who clearly chose the right director to hand it off to. Verbinski may be best known for the megahit Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but he’s not one of Hollywood’s most conventional filmmakers. Look no further than his last two films, The Lone Ranger (2013) and A Cure for Wellness (2017). The former (a guilty pleasure!) is NOT your typical summer blockbuster; it’s more like an expensive peyote trip. The latter is a mind-bending Lovecraftian nightmare. Even the Brad Pitt-Julia Roberts vehicle The Mexican (2001) doesn’t fit comfortably into the action-rom-com mold. This guy doesn’t play by the rules. He proudly breaks every one with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
Verbinski, in turn, chose the right guy to play the film’s unbalanced (?) protagonist, the Time Traveler with No Name. Rockwell manages a tricky balance here, keeping his character completely ungrounded while still maintaining control. He’s all over the map emotionally playing him as alternately and simultaneously manic, sarcastic, glib and sad. He’s just the leader a small disparate squad of misfits needs. Everybody does a great job in their roles, but Richardson steals the show as Ingrid, a rebellious twenty-something who plays a crucial role (one she doesn’t yet realize) in what’s going on. She carries herself with complete confidence like she was born to play an unlikely heroine.
I love how Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die entertains while warning about the dangers of technology if left unchecked. It really is like a drug with all the folks who can’t stop scrolling at the expense of living life in real time. It’s funny, trippy and mind-bending. It’s absurd and intelligent. It’s a wild and wired ride on a roller coaster through a funhouse. And it has a giant kitty cat too. How can you possibly pass that up?
