4K Ultra HD Review – Best of luck, enjoy, and stay safe (2025)

      **Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, 2025.**

      Directed by Gore Verbinski.

      Featuring Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple.

      **SYNOPSIS:**

      Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die might be the most underrated movie of last year. While it isn’t flawless, it provides an enjoyable experience and deserves a chance for a revival after its theatrical run. Sadly, it only includes one brief five-minute bonus feature, but perhaps a more extensive edition will be released in the future.

      Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, based on a screenplay by Matthew Robinson, certainly deserved a better fate than grossing less than half of its budget in global box office sales. Though not without its imperfections, the film is entertaining and serves as a prime example of a director taking creative risks in a time when most genre films are expected to fit into a franchise model.

      The movie stars Sam Rockwell as an unnamed man from the future who appears in our time at a Norms diner in Los Angeles at 10:10 pm. It becomes evident that he has visited this location multiple times as he seeks to find the right group of patrons to prevent the bleak future he hails from.

      Looking like a supporting character out of a Terry Gilliam film, he is initially dismissed as insane, but his knowledge of specific details about the patrons causes some to consider his credibility. With the police on their way, he has little time left to select his latest group—this being the 117th attempt—and initiate his mission.

      Once he believes he has found the right people, they manage to escape, albeit with one casualty during the process, leading the film into flashbacks that reveal some of the characters' histories.

      Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) are the first to be spotlighted. She teaches while he serves as the substitute teacher at her high school. Frustrated with his students' incessant use of phones during class, Mark touches one of the devices, leading to a chaotic chase by a horde of zombie-like teenagers.

      In another storyline, Susan (Juno Temple) grapples with the unbearable sorrow of losing her son during a school shooting and learns about a company willing to provide her with a clone of him. Unfortunately, the clone comes with advertisements, and his mechanical demeanor starts to unsettle her. She also receives a disembodied AI version of her son on a device, which advises her to follow the man in the diner.

      Meanwhile, Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) suffers from an allergy to electronic devices, especially those using Wi-Fi, and is in the diner, despondent after losing her boyfriend Tim (Tom Taylor) to a mysterious VR world linked to a headset sent to them.

      All these backstories are intertwined with the future of the main character, where many individuals have become lost in a VR world, leading to depleted natural resources and widespread fatalities.

      While Susan’s backstory doesn’t integrate into the current timeline as smoothly as the others, and Ingrid’s severe allergy to technology seems to disappear when the plot requires it, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die remains an enjoyable experience from start to finish. It’s worth seeing to support the creation of more films like it.

      This 4K Ultra HD edition also features a Blu-ray and a code for a digital copy of the film. One might assume that a movie released last year would automatically have perfect visuals on home video, but that isn’t always guaranteed, as the disc’s encoding can significantly impact quality. Attempting to fit a lengthy film onto a disc with insufficient capacity can result in issues like mosquito noise in darker scenes.

      However, there are no concerns with this release: it looks and sounds excellent. Fortunately, any fears regarding Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die lacking sufficient space on the disc are unfounded since the only extra is a five-minute making-of that merely scratches the surface. Perhaps the film will find a second chance on disc or streaming, with a special edition eventually making its debut.

      **Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★**

      Brad Cook