HFC at SXSW '24: We're All Gonna Die

We’re All Gonna Die is the first feature-length film from Freddie Wong and Matthew Arnold. If you’ve been around YouTube for a while you probably know the duo as the founders of Rocket Jump. An alien being known as “the Spike” has crashed down onto Earth, and every so often it causes something they refer to as a jump. These jumps cause places on the planet to merge and teleport everything within the area to another location. Thalia (Ashly Burch) is a beekeeper who has a large order of bees to fulfill to a farm out west, Kai (Jordan Rodrigues) just lost a friend and the only thing he has to remember him by is his car. Thanks to the Spike, the two must go on a cross-country journey to find the forest location where their belongings have traveled to after a jump. 

 If you know about Rocket Jump, you know that a feature has been in the works for a long time. The duo have created countless YouTube videos to show aspiring filmmakers that they too can get into creating things without an insanely high bar for entry. Their work on Video Game High School (a web series created by the duo) was creative and inspiring, not to mention insanely impressive on the visuals side. It just made sense that a film was to come sooner or later, and it finally arrived with We’re All Gonna Die. 

Ashly Burch and Jordan Rodrigues | Credit: RocketJump

 The film is about grief. Talia lost her family once, they’re buried on a property that she can no longer afford, and she fears losing them again. Kai lost his friend, and the only memory he has is his best friend’s car. When the jump happens and they lose the car and Talia’s beekeeping equipment, they have to try to learn what it means to open up to people and deal with their grief. An emotional journey for both of the characters unfortunately falls a bit flat due to the film’s script. Moments where the audience is supposed to empathize with the characters hit, but also find a way to stick around for far too long. Just in case you forgot that the film was about grief, the film reminds you several times through drawn-out monologues that overly emphasize the drama of it all without really adding much to the narrative or the characters. With a bit more time in the oven, the dialogue could have been way more impactful but instead leaves you anxious for the story to move along and for the next comedic moment. 

We’re All Gonna Die is at its greatest when it finds the balance between the emotional and the comedy. Jordan Rodrigues is hilarious in the movie as the aloof Kai, wandering through life and his emotions in a pretty recognizable way for someone who just lost someone important to them. His chemistry with Ashly Burch really shines on the screen and allows for the more grounded moments to hit. Ashly Burch has really found her rhythm in this film. Watching her in this really showed off her range and the things that she’s learned from other projects like Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin?, and Mythic Quest. Her cadence and tone are also refined here in a way that makes a strong case for her voice work in games like the Horizon series and Life is Strange potentially being the most valuable tool in her toolbox. She puts it all on full display with this performance and provides a good point in her acting resume to point to for more serious roles in the future. 

Coming in at an hour and 50 minutes, We’re All Gonna Die is a bit too long but maybe that’s the point. The grieving process is long and confusing: it’s funny, sad, and a bit all over the place. The film tries its best to convey these emotions, but falls a bit short of the finish line in that regard. Its messages of perseverance and finding a new family comes together at the end and the humor is what it relies on to come to that conclusion. Sometimes it can come off more as a film made by YouTubers, but in a way that’s really inspiring and the film’s best quality. You can make a film if you want to, you can make it for less than most movies are being made for nowadays and it will find its audience. 

The directors clearly had a vision for the story they wanted to tell and that comes across. Once the film finds distribution, it will resonate with a lot of people in the same ways that their short-form content did with audiences for years. Before the film started, the directors were waiting outside with a camera in hand, presumably to make a video about the premiere of their film at SXSW, and that was a really cool image to see. Most premieres had their cast and crew hanging around, but they weren’t accessible to the general public prior to the film’s premiere. It felt different to watch the two directors film the crowd with a sense of pride that really tied together what filmmaking was all about and doubled as a tentpole moment in their career thus far.