Darren Carver-Balsiger’s review published on Letterboxd:
I saw this at Leeds International Film Festival 2018.
Warning: This review touches on death and suicide in a manner which may be upsetting.
Die Tomorrow is quite the little masterpiece. Last year, at the same festival, I watched a Thai film on a whim and it was one of the best films I saw in 2017. So I thought I'd watch another Thai film this year and went in completely blind, knowing only the title and that this was its UK premiere. Well, the Gods (i.e. the festival organisers) have been kind, this is another knockout.
Die Tomorrow moves at its own pace, a film that takes its time, relaxing and flexing each scene into exactly what it needs to be without appearing to try. Nominally it's a series of short films, but the connecting tissue makes it one effort. It becomes a series of wavy timelines, bobbing in and out, around each other, within each other. It's so cohesive, a film of cutaways, edited so smoothly. It's focused, mostly using a 1:1 aspect ratio to trap its subjects. Within these confined shots comes a lyrical swirl of single take camerawork, young people talk and live, death outside their reality, instead just waiting in the dark unseen fringes ready to be opened up.
Death. The day before death is like any other, a day of living. It doesn't have to be something different. Death is just a time stamp, numbers etched in minds that will also die, stone that will eventually weather, clocks that will move steadfastly ahead. Days before death are retroactive, designated importance by numbers yet to be assigned. After death life goes on exactly the same, it doesn't matter if you miss it. As Die Tomorrow shows us the mundanity of the aftermath of death, we are reminded of its ubiquity by the literal counter in the top left corner, by the information that thousands have died as we watch a film.
Die Tomorrow is weirdly life affirming. We read a suicide note, similar to something I could have written. Yet this moment isn't anything, not a moment of pain, or of joy, just a moment. A screen of text. We're reminded of death constantly throughout Die Tomorrow, of the many accidents that befall innocent people. Yet they're all just raindrops in a storm, a messy continuum across a sprawling set of realist tales. When someone writes of guilt, of selfishness, of being weak, of wanting to end it all, it somehow seems like one accident among many. A person as unlucky as anyone else prematurely taken away. An unavoidable fate. Like the centenarian interviewed for the film, we're just born with something that will take us to our end point. Some will move seemingly forever, some will be cruelly snatched away young. All death is sad, but it's shared amongst all of us. There's a balance between making death sacred, a big deal, and trying to reconcile that it's normal and happens to all of us. A man might fall off a building, but the sun will still rise in the morning.
Quietly ticking, Die Tomorrow is just a collection of the inevitable. Ends that ebb and flow like all things in life. This is a film about trying to keep things normal, of watching the world advance. Trump and Reddit get namechecks, the young are modern and informed, yet this generation only exists because so many came previously, because so much death has occurred. We will move forward, we will create a better world for our children, and we will face death. We wonder if we're going to live or die, if we have a weakness within us, yet we're so lucky to live, let alone to die in a world that cares.
Die Tomorrow is a beautiful tribute to the end. A collection of moving parts that are profound and touching. There's crying alone, celebrating to the end, living based on luck, there's a lot of individual sections that touch on finality like few films ever have.
Flow my tears. Let me cry. Let me live. Let me die.
