Gore Verbinski Returns: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Absolutely Delivers

Gore Verbinski just resurfaced after nine years with a sci-fi swing that feels both overdue and uncomfortably timely. It is big, weird, sometimes messy, and exactly the kind of movie I want him making.

The setup

Title says it all: 'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.' A jittery stranger from the future (Sam Rockwell) walks into a Los Angeles diner and announces he is here to stop AI from wiping us out. He ropes a handful of regular people into his plan, whether they are ready for it or not. This is not his first try, either — it is one of hundreds.

The mission is hilariously, terrifyingly simple: get a USB drive loaded with AI safeguards into a specific computer that is about to push the tech to its next phase. Complication: that machine is being operated by a nine-year-old boy. As you might guess, everything that can go wrong tries to.

Verbinski, back in the pocket

This is Verbinski’s first feature since 'A Cure for Wellness,' and it plays like he has been itching to get weird again. He has always been one of the strangest mainstream stylists out there — even when he got swallowed up by too many pirate ships and a certain masked ranger. I still think the first 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is his best movie, and this is the most purely satisfying thing he has made since then.

Matthew Robinson’s script gives the film a clear lane: it is a cautionary tale about how we keep trading reality for convenience and entertainment while technology quietly takes the wheel. If 'The Terminator' framed machines as relentless physical threats and 'The Matrix' moved the fight into virtual reality, this one’s about the incremental surrender — how we willingly hand over our lives, one tap and swipe at a time.

'It is not 'Terminator' or 'The Matrix' level, but it gets closer than you would expect — and closer than Verbinski has been in over twenty years.'

How it unfolds

The structure is a neat swing: the first half plays almost like an anthology, hopping through the backstories of the people who end up on Rockwell’s team, then the back half locks in for the chase.

• Michael Pena and Zazie Beetz are teachers getting tormented by students so phone-poisoned they feel barely human anymore.
• Haley Lu Richardson is a young woman literally allergic to technology and Wi-Fi, whose proudly offline boyfriend suddenly falls hard for VR.
• Juno Temple gets the most volatile thread: her character’s son is killed in a school shooting and then replaced by a clone. It is designed to provoke, and while the ambition is obvious, that section does not entirely land.

Once the team forms up, the movie shifts gears into a more straight-ahead, Rockwell-forward sprint. He is perfectly cast — manic, funny, and a little tragic — and Verbinski throws in some striking, resourceful imagery for a movie that is clearly not operating with a blank check. Geoff Zanelli’s score gives it extra pulse.

Theatrical (for a reason)

Fittingly, this is not rolling out on a streamer. Briarcliff Entertainment is giving it a theatrical release — appropriate for a film that side-eyes our screen addiction — and it is the kind of movie that is going to need people talking it up. Back in the 80s or 90s, this would have been stamped as a cult item almost immediately. With any luck, the genre crowd shows up and brings friends.

The take

Wildly ambitious, sometimes uneven, but genuinely invigorating. It is sharp about where we are headed and still wants to entertain the hell out of you. It is nice to have Verbinski back in this mode.

My score: 8/10.