Andrei Gennadievitch (Vitaliy Khaev) just wanted to eat his dinner in peace. A police officer who is respected (perhaps even feared) by his peers, he leads what appears to be a highly-principled life, based on a strong set of morals instilled in him from an early age. However, this afternoon turns out to be something the veteran policeman didn’t expect when Matvei (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) arrives at his door unannounced. Matvei claims to be the boyfriend of Andrei’s daughter, Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde), a struggling actress who has been looking for better opportunities for a while, and has sought out help from every source, including her callous father, who refuses to assist her. The reason for the young man’s visit isn’t clear – he isn’t even able to concoct a valid excuse for his presence, which is clearly to murder Andrei, who apparently raped his own daughter. Sent to take revenge on behalf of Olya, Matvei is not expecting to be confronted with a man whose dedication to his job is only superceded by his skillfulness at combat – and whether throwing a television across the room, or using an array of appliances as the tool of torture, Andrei makes it known that he is not someone who will take such a threat lightly. Over the course of a few hours, the two men battle it out, taking advantage of one another and trying to succeed, with neither seeming to be able to take those final steps towards death that the other is so intent on achieving. Along the way, fragments of the past become clear, such as Andrei’s own malicious dealings, which include his partner (Michael Gor), a man desperately seeking funds to help save his dying wife. Matvei’s own past, including his relationship with Olya, become clear as well, particularly the events leading up to this violent mission, where the truth becomes quite evident, and the reasons for this bloody battle becoming all the more harrowing once the facts are all known.

If you’re looking for a film that combines the beautifully-choreographed fight scenes of the martial arts, the perverted sense of humour of gritty, gory grindhouse horror, and the family values of any great comedy, you’re well on your way to enjoying Why Don’t You Just Die! (Russian: Папа, сдохни), the hilariously irreverent horror comedy written and directed by Kirill Sokolov, who ventures deep into the darkest recesses of the human condition to produce something so deranged and unconventional, just the realization that someone was able to get away with what the director was doing here is beyond bewildering. All sense of sophistication and subteltly are entirely lost in this film, which instead replaces everything we are led to believe as being almost sacred with unrestricted, relentless violence that is strung together by a story that appears to be something of a revenge tale, but actually flourishes into a death-defying morality tale, a social commentary that has nothing but vitriol for the characters it depicts, and while it is unconventional, there are occassionally films that carry nothing but umbrage for every one of their characters, which is a perfect description for this film, as its anarchic approach to a very simple premise turns it into a rage-fueled epic of violence and despair, with a very peculiar form of comedy flowing throughout, giving context to a film that benefits massively from an approach that gradually erodes at everything we consider to be decent, and instead hones in on the darker side of our species, exploring it through an unforgettable array of conversation and images, proving Sokolov to be one of world cinema’s most essential new voices, and someone who was able to weave an unforgettable narrative from something that could have so easily been unbearable.

What is most notable about Why Don’t You Just Die! is just how striking it is – from the very first moment, it functions as an unhinged assault on the sense, an unclassifiable film that combines horror, comedy, psychological thriller and even some romance in its pursuit of becoming an unforgettable social satire (some have compared this to Meet the Parents had it been made by Quentin Tarantino – a reductive, but still very appropriate, comparison that gives potential viewers a taste of what to expect), with an acidic core that prevents it from ever having any indication of hope on the horizon – optimism is entirely absent in this film, which is something that would be very helpful to anyone who is curious about what is contained within this very strange film. However, very little can be done to prepare the viewer for the chaos that is about to erupt over the course of the next hour, since Sokolov packages so much harrowing violence into this relatively curt film, punctuating it with a demented sense of humour that is rarely found in any film with even the slightest amount of respect for the social strata it is critiquing. Sokolov is clearly a very gifted filmmaker, albeit one whose sensibilities may be bewildering to those who aren’t able to get on his wavelength, which is undeniably the reason why this film has become something of a controversial piece, a work of art that is divisive by design, intentionally created as a means to polarize audiences and cause them to look at the different ways in which they consume art – whether one absolutely adores Why Don’t You Just Die! or entirely despises it and finds it a brutal, unconvincing muddle of gore and repressed anger, you’re not soon going to forget it, with the director painting with broad strokes and getting the very reactions he seemed to be courting through an endless array of provocative decisions that centre the film and make it something that, for better or worse, is not likely to leave the mind of any viewer, especially those who weren’t expecting to be taken on such a wild ride.

However, despite the enormous amount of detail that went into making this work of purely transgressive art, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a remarkably simple film. Taking the common trope of the “bottle film” (referring to stories that take place in a single location, in this case a small apartment owned by a police officer somewhere in urban Russia), the film is a nearly real-time analysis of a single afternoon in the lives of a small group of characters, each one having their own motivations for being in this working-class apartment. Throughout this time, the is an oscillation between extreme violence in the fight scenes between characters, and some hilarious (and often quite unsettling) conversations between them, which gives context to the chaos, and justifies the insanity in such a way that it becomes plausible, but not any less disconcerting. Sokolov manages to create something that isn’t only defined by its violence, but also by its fierce intelligence, with the labyrinthine story being presented as a cinematic puzzle – we’re thrown directly into this world, and throughout the film are given fragments that we piece together to find solutions, which provide us with clarity, and give the audience the opportunity to penetrate the minds of these characters, understanding their fragile states and their motivations for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a very unique attempt at deriving some fascinating insights into the human condition, which appears to be the modus operandi of the director and his cohorts, who seem to relish in their ability to extract an endless amount of emotions from a relatively simple premise. Shifting focus amongst these characters, showing each of them more or less equally, makes this a film driven by a warped sense of community, each piece of it contributing to the wider discourse incited by a story that simply could not have been made by anyone too hesitant to fully surrender to the most visceral, harrowing absurdity available to them.

Why Don’t You Just Die! is an inherently difficult film to talk about, because there isn’t much here that we can compare it to. In terms of the story and the form it takes, the director is clearly inspired by a wide selection of pre-existing works, ranging across every conceivable genre. In terms of the style, there is a very renegade approach taken that often threatens to derail the film entirely – just as we think it cannot become more brutal or uncomfortable, the director surprises us with even more violence, or harrowing commentary, which exists in a very unconventional form of symbiosis, sampling from each other in a way that feels unprecedented. Belonging to the small but unforgettable genre of the “farce of ultra-violence” (of which it could conceivably be the only true constituent), Why Don’t You Just Die! is simply unforgettable. There’s a certain idea that this film is just ninety minutes of extreme violence peppered with caustic comedy that helps break the monotony – on the surface, such an estimation is perfectly correct, but it dismisses the fact that there is still so much more to be said about this film than we see on the surface, particularly in regards to the underlying tension that is far more complex than we initially imagine. On both a narrative and visual level, the director formed something quite remarkable, using a limited location and simple premise to craft a film that dives into a side of humanity that may appear absurd in comparison to more nuanced action thrillers. It all comes down to a film that has an unusual amount of heart, which can be found in the fleeting moments between violence that seems to be propelled on the virtue of nihilistic philosophical ramblings. Whatever one’s response is to this film, it is sure to be a passionate one, and if a film can’t be universally-adored, the second-best option is for it to inspire a strong reaction, and it’s not likely that this perverted dark comedy is going to result in any form of ambivalence.