Death Becomes Her (1992)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Madeline is married to Ernest, who was once her arch-rival Helen's fiancé. After recovering from a mental breakdown, Helen vows to kill Madeline and steal back Ernest. Unfortunately for everyone, the introduction of a magic potion causes things to be a great deal more complicated than a mere murder plot.
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What critics compared Death Becomes Her to
Apart from the Addams Family feel, find nods to Hammer horror (a cameo by Christopher Lee included), typically glib period source music ("Knights in White Satin," "Season of the Witch"), and a climax that evokes Death Becomes Her.
Troll dolls!), climaxing with a CGI-fueled confrontation between the blondes in the Collinwood foyer that revives unwelcome memories of Robert Zemeckis’ “Death Becomes Her.”
At one point, it even appears to emulate that macabre 1992 comedy “Death Becomes Her.”
Up until an f/x-laden climax that desperately conjures everything from "Rebecca" to "Death Becomes Her," Depp just about holds it all together, unsurprisingly emerging as the pic's most reliable element.
About their battle: It manifests itself in a special-effects showcase that needs the feather-light touch of “Death Becomes Her,” not the tromping stampede of “Jumanji.”
Los Angeles turns out to be ground zero for this unique riff on Death Becomes Her (1992), plus a formidable array of other cult titles in what is essentially a ‘be careful what you wish for’ moral fable.
But it won’t de-age her like Isabella Rossellini’s serum did for the women of Death Becomes Her. Instead, it quite gruesomely creates a second body from Elisabeth’s DNA.
Following a burst of contemporary female-fronted psychological thrillers such as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, A Simple Favor carefully straddles the line between parody and homage, often settling into a campy elegance, not unlike that of Death Becomes Her.
And Shaun references not only Romero’s gruesome series, but also Star Wars, the see-through-body bullet holes in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead and Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and the 1999 British TV series Spaced (on which Pegg, Frost and Wright first teamed).
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But as Meryl Streep exclaimed in a particularly amusing moment in Death Becomes Her, “Now a warning?!” Yes – even as you take in the dark delights that director and co-screenwriter (along with brother Jonathan) that Christopher Nolan has cooked up – be aware that this blockbuster is one that comes with a price.
It’s the first obvious homage to another film, 1992’s DEATH BECOMES HER…
Which is not to imply that he is alone in seeing the grotesquely funny underside of an industry that turns pretty girls into meat (“Death Becomes Her” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” come to mind, as does the entire casting-couch history of Hollywood).
We've seen this catfight dynamic played out less hysterically before, in films like Black Swan and Death Becomes Her.
But in their bid to both amuse themselves and satisfy their corporate minders, the tale turns into a pungent mush that gives off whiffs of everything from Phantom Thread to Death Becomes Her to, yes, Joker.
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There are two fantastic sequences that are straight out of “Death Becomes Her” — one involves a surgery and the other, a series of broken limbs.
Rick Carter, the man behind such glorious production designs as Jurassic Park , Death Becomes Her and Avatar blends his production into the original trilogy effectively, modernizing its trappings carefully without diverting so stupendously as to make things seem too radically different.