'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die' Review: Gore Verbinski is Back in a Blast of Anti-AI Sci-fi Comedy
- Feb 25
- 4 min read
By Dan Bremner - February 25, 2026
Ten years after being unfairly shoved into “director’s jail” following the severely underrated A Cure for Wellness (a rewatch is long overdue), visual madman Gore Verbinski storms back with something delirious, furious and gloriously unhinged. Working on a comparatively modest $20 million budget, he delivers a high-concept sci-fi action-comedy that feels more alive than most bloated studio tentpoles costing ten times as much. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is chaotic, overloaded, occasionally indulgent, but some of the most fun I’ve had in a cinema this year.
The premise is beautifully simple and immediately combustible: a man claiming to be from the future storms a Los Angeles diner and takes the patrons hostage, insisting they are the key to preventing an AI-driven apocalypse. What follows is part siege thriller, part time-loop puzzle, part satirical tech nightmare. It’s loud, colourful, absurd and constantly escalating. Pig-masked goons, school shooting therapy groups (School shootings are played as a brilliantly Black Mirror-esque joke here, living toy mascots and even a giant mutated cat creature all make appearances. The film operates on “anything goes” rules and mostly gets away with it. You can tell Verbinski was very much a fan of Everything Everywhere All at Once.
With the unfortunate rise of AI in sectors that makes things worse, Verbinski takes aim at the mind-numbing and brain-damaging AI slop in the form of garbage apps like Tik-Tok and Facebook Reels that rot the minds of people all day, every day. I've seen it up close, and it's not pretty. I once watched a woman in a waiting room with her mouth open (bordering on dribbling) mindlessly scrolling through AI videos of fat people falling over on Tik-Tok. Her facial expression didn't move a fraction as she pressed like and spammed the comments section with several laughing emojis. The film perfectly encapsulates that utterly dead behind the eyes and brain-damaging effect this short-form content does to the masses, and it is horrifying. I am quickly starting to believe NPC theory, and I see them every day. The film exaggerates this into dystopian horror, but the exaggeration barely feels like satire.
At the centre of this insane time travel story is Sam Rockwell, delivering one of his most electric performances in years. As the so-called “Man From the Future,” he’s twitchy, charismatic, hilariously unhinged and, at key moments, surprisingly heartfelt. He’s the rock holding everything together in a strong ensemble, equal parts street preacher, burnout prophet and reluctant hero. It’s the kind of performance that reminds you how magnetic he can be when given the right material. Honestly, if Gore Verbinski decided to return to Pirates (the only real way to make that franchise matter again) and wanted to swap out Johnny Depp for Rockwell, I'd be more than okay with it.
The non-linear structure and extended runtime does allow the supporting cast to feel fleshed out. With the core group of apocalypse saviours given extended flashbacks between set-pieces in the future, showing how they all came to accept this lunatic mission. The flashback/flashforward structure could have led to something choppy, but instead, the vignettes make each backstory feel like condensed and hilariously bleak and satirical episodes of Black Mirror, all of which allow Haley Lu Richardson (who I briefly thought was Florence Pugh), Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz and Juno Temple to have moments to shine in wild and surprising ways.
Visually, Verbinski hasn’t lost his touch. The action sequences are crisp and coherent, including a particularly thrilling finale of insane imagery and ideas that squeezes every cent out of the budget. There's even a fun, but small classic Verbinski cause-and-effect set-piece that was great to see. For $20 million, this looks phenomenal, inventive camera work, practical effects blended with sharp digital flourishes, and a sense of visual playfulness that so many people couldn't pull off with 10x the budget. I was honestly reminded of how little heart, soul and imagination Netflix's abysmal The Electric State had in comparison, which cost exponentially more and felt infinitely less inspired. I have no idea how well this will do, but I hope Verbinski gets another shot with a huge budget, as he's one of the few left that can actually make films that look like they cost hundreds of millions.
What also helps the film stand out is how it handles its time-travel and sci-fi mechanics compared to its peers. Where many modern entries in the genre, from the puzzle-box density of Tenet to the multiverse maximalism of Everything Everywhere All at Once lean into convolution, irony or meta detachment, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes a surprisingly sincere and direct route. Its rules are chaotic, yes, but emotionally they’re clear. It’s less interested in dazzling you with diagrams and paradox charts and more focused on the human consequences of technological hubris. In that sense, it feels closer in spirit to scrappy, idea-driven sci-fi like Looper or even the blunt cautionary streak of The Terminator, genre storytelling used as a vehicle for urgency rather than intellectual gymnastics. That earnestness gives the film weight. It doesn’t pander to the audience or hide behind snark, it says what it thinks, loudly and clearly, and that sincerity is precisely what makes it cut through its clear inspirations and stand on its own.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a fantastic return for Gore Verbinski. Packed with fun ideas, enjoyable characters and an original take on the time travel formula with a venomously anti-AI approach that's refreshingly blunt and satirical in all the best ways. Definitely a bit overstuffed, but a real visual treat that makes incredible use of a modest budget. A real blast.
'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die' is out now in cinemas.
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