Movie Review: 'Darby of the Dead' High Concept Forgettable

Darby and the Dead (2022)

Directed by Silas Howard

Written by Wenona Wilms, Becca Greene

Starring Riele Downs, Auli'i Cravalho, Chosen Jacobs

Release Date December 2nd, 2022

Published November 30th, 2022

Darby and the Dead posits the story of a child being able to speak to the dead as something non-traumatic. By the logic of this movie, Darby gained the gift of speaking to the dead following a near-death experience as a young child. That same day she also lost her mother though she didn't get to talk to her after death. Since that young age, Darby has made it her mission to help the dead move on to the afterlife by wrapping up their unfinished work on Earth.

This entails talking to living family members and facilitating reconciliations or resolving disputes. A final goodbye or an I'm sorry or an I love you, is often all it takes to help the dead to their final resting place. But, what if someone dies and has no idea what their unfinished business on Earth is? That's the case for High School Queen Bee, Capri (Auli'i Cravalho) who dies in truly stupid fashion while bullying Darby. As a ghost, Capri has no idea what her unfinished business is supposed to be.

This means that she must convince Darby to help her, despite Capri having treated her poorly while she was alive. Her first idea is that she needs a spectacular Sweet 16 party. Capri is convinced that if she has an epic party in celebration of her that this will send her off to the afterlife. However, for Darby to pull this off, she will need to convince Capri's popular girl entourage, still mourning their Cheer Captain and friend, to throw this amazing party.

Obviously, these popular girls are not about to listen to dorky Darby tell them to have a party for Capri. So, Capri sets about turning Darby into a popular girl. This includes a makeover montage and convincing Darby to become a cheerleader, something she used to do before her mother died. After a lot of convincing, involving annoying the heck out of Darby with insistent yakking, Darby agrees and the plot of Darby and the Dead works through the gears of teen movie clichés.

The best part of Darby of the Dead is a brief and understatedly charming performance by TV veteran Tony Danza. Danza plays a ghost who refuses to move on to the afterlife because he's waiting for his wife to pass. He's sticking around to watch over her and be there when she goes so they can move on together. Until that time, he hangs out and plays chess with Darby while offering advice on the things she's working on with other dead people. The biggest and only laugh in the movie is a dark joke about the potential death of Danza's character's wife.

Other than that, these are unmemorable characters working a high concept via a series of recognizable clichés. It takes very little intellectual effort to understand that a big party is not the satisfaction that Capri needs. Just as it takes no effort to see that Darby's story is about coming out of her shell and recovering from the grief over the loss of her mother. That these 'revelations' occur cannot be a surprise to you. Thus, the movie needs something else to drive it and there just isn't anything else there.

Aside from Danza's heartfelt performance, which gets sidelined far too early on, Darby and the Dead cycles through familiar elements on the way to an easy to predict finish. The acting is fine, completely unmemorable in its competence. The production is television quality with mediocre special effects and bland production design. The music is perhaps the one truly bad thing about the movie as it all sounds like the same tedious modern pop over and and over and over again. Ugh!

Darby of the Dead premieres on Hulu on December 2nd. Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find more than 1000 of my modern movie reviews on my Vocal.Media profile. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the Everyone's a Critic movie Review Podcast. If you've enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my work here on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks!