Rating: NR | Runtime: 89 minutes
Director(s): Meera Menon
Writer(s): Meera Menon & Paul Gleason

Sometimes you want someone you love to be really wrong.

It’s been two years since the world fell apart and Mom and Dad Malhotra fell prey to the chaos. The good thing for survivors is that the resulting “biters” in director Meera Menon and co-writer Paul Gleason’s Didn’t Die only hunt during the night. So, there’s time to bolster your hideout and prepare against attacks. Time to go searching for food and weapons without the threat of danger. Time to roam the area and stab sleeping zombies through the head so as not to need to worry about them at sunset. It means people can keep living with some adaptation … if they so choose. To endure the pain of loss, however, often renders that choice a tough one to select.

Some, like Hari (Samrat Chakrabarti) and Barbara (Katie McCuen), stick to what they know and the company of each other. Some, like Vincent (George Basil), retreat into isolation to do their best without the risk of emotion becoming a liability. Others, like Vinita (Kiran Deol) and Rish (Vishal Vijayakumar), distract themselves from needing to choose by hitting the road to see what the rest of America is doing to cope. The more you center other people’s tales of grief and possibility, the easier it is to escape processing your own trauma. One could say Vinita hides behind the sarcasm of her radio-broadcast podcast. That she avoids reliving her own pain by focusing on everyone else’s.

As she approaches episode one hundred, Vinita and Rish return to Malhotra home base. Partially to be with their brother Hari and partially to mark the milestone with a “live show” attended by whomever is still around, the journey has the potential to either remind her of what she’s been missing or guarantee her desire to put the blinders back on and hit the road again. Unfortunately, a couple more wrinkles arrive in the form of an ex-boyfriend (Vincent) with a found, orphaned infant in his arms and the apparent evolution of the “biters” from nocturnal pest to all-day menace. Suddenly the stakes grow to a fever pitch, the need to confront their respective demons becomes deafening, and the space to combat it all with compassion and love expands exponentially.

The first chapter can feel a bit forced as result because of the nature of needing exposition and the general sardonic tone of characters who refuse to listen to reason because avoidance is the quickest way to apathy. It still proves a fun take on the George Romero monochrome formula with the addition of the podcast and the absurdity of trying to advertise it during an apocalypse, though. The three Malhotra siblings have an authentic rapport between Hari’s pragmatism, Vinitra’s rebellion, and Rish’s innocence (he’s yet to kill a “biter”). And Barbara and Vincent as outsiders lends a nice bit of cultural conflict for laughs while also smoothing out the humanity line that everyone is equal in times of crisis.

It’s the second chapter where Didn’t Die hits its stride due to the inevitable dissolution of everyone’s individual defenses. The dialogue becomes more natural. The acting becomes more emotive. The stakes become worthy of our investment now that the characters have allowed themselves to invest in each other. From fragmented pieces to a communal whole (strength in numbers), the overall vibe becomes infectious as we begin to believe everything might turn out okay for this makeshift expansion of the Malhotra clan. We need that for what’s about to happen to resonate. We need their vulnerability and acceptance to appreciate the tragically bittersweet hope for the future to hit home.

The result is very independent in budgetary constraints and aesthetic, but you can tell the cast really cares for each other. Menon explained during the post-premiere Q&A at Sundance that a lot of what we see on-screen was improvised by the actors above the outline she and Gleason wrote, so that camaraderie is real and truly the key to getting us onboard yet another riff on the zombie template. That purity is where you set yourself apart in this genre. Yes, the gore factor is memorable, but it means nothing if we don’t learn to love the characters fighting off the inevitability that they’ll be next. It might take some time to get there, but I locked it as soon as it did. Because a monster killing your family isn’t your fault. Being too afraid of that certainty to enjoy life with them first is.

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Kiran Deol and George Basil appear in DIDN’T DIE by Meera Menon, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Paul Gleason.