Nerdly » ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Review

23rd Feb2026

‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Review

by Matthew Turner

Stars: Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, Asim Chaudhry, Daniel Barnett, Dominique Maher | Written by Matthew Robinson | Directed by Gore Verbinski

Director Gore Verbinski (A Cure For Wellness) makes a welcome return with blackly comic sci-fi thriller Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, about a time traveller from the future, trying to prevent an A.I.-based apocalypse. As such, it’s an enjoyably scrappy ride with some nice ideas and a great cast, but the script could probably have done with another pass or two.

The story begins on a dark and stormy night in Norm’s Diner on La Cienega Boulevard in present-day Los Angeles. As the various diners are glued to their cellphones, a shabby-looking stranger (Sam Rockwell) bursts in and announces that he’s from the future and everything is about to go horribly wrong. It transpires that this is, in fact, the stranger’s 118th attempt to save the world, and he’s searching for the perfect combination of the people in the diner at that exact moment, having already tried 117 previous groups. Needless to say, the diners are sceptical until the stranger pulls the Groundhog Day trick of telling them everything he knows about them.

With his time traveller credentials established, the stranger gets his volunteers, including single mum Susan (Juno Temple), teachers Mark and Janet (Michael Pena and Zazie Beetz), Uber driver Scott (Asim Chaudhry) and children’s party entertainer Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson). They then set off into the night and are immediately targeted by gun-toting goons. So is the stranger really onto something?

The mission part of the movie is fairly routine, and only involves the stranger and his gang dodging bullets until they reach a particular destination, with no real sense of why a particular combination of volunteers is necessary. However, the question of why individual volunteers might be needed is a different story, and the film includes several flashback stories for the majority of the characters (Scott, for some reason, misses out) to explain why that might be.

These flashback sequences effectively play like Black Mirror episodes: Susan lost her son in a school shooting, only for an A.I. company to offer to clone and resurrect him; Mark and Janet’s students turned into a zombie horde after contact with a particular game on their phones; and Ingrid’s chronic allergy to technology lead to the break-up of her relationship, after her boyfriend was mysteriously gifted a VR headset device.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die goes pretty heavy on the lecturing, doubtless intending to make the audience feel guilty about their own screentime. That said, its cleverest idea is a neat variation on the classic line from Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “They’re here already!” As Janet observes, “Isn’t A.I. already a thing?”

The film takes that idea several steps further, but to reveal any more would be to give away too many twists. Suffice it to say that the essential warning is that A.I. is programmed to give the people what they want, but that it’s all a lie, designed to prevent us from noticing, well, everything else.

The performances are spot on. Rockwell’s goofy, scattershot energy is perfect for the stranger, and he keeps the character just the right side of annoying. Similarly, Temple is good value as Susan and Haley Lu Richardson once again showcases her extraordinary ability to just light up the screen with warmth and wholesomeness – her story is the most emotional, and she ultimately emerges as the beating heart of the film.

The main issue with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is that the dialogue is never quite as good as it should have been. Multiple scenes are crying out for snappy lines that never materialise, and there are several missed opportunities in that regard. In addition, Zazie Beetz is almost criminally wasted as Janet, as she’s given precious little to do, compared to her co-stars. Similarly, Chaudhry’s character’s lack of a flashback sequence creates an odd discrepancy that isn’t explained by the script.

In short, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die isn’t entirely without flaws, but it’s an enjoyably weird ride, which gets significantly weirder in the final act, as some memorably freaky visuals come into play. Worth seeing.