For all its carnage, the bloody action-comedy hinges on its disastrously dysfunctional couple. As the two leads, Jason Segel offers excellent comic timing while Samara Weaving brings her explosive Scream Queen sensibilities—playing a bitter version of her Ready or Not Final Girl without the wedding dress. Segel, known for a series of lovable goofball roles from How I Met Your Mother to The Muppets and now Shrinking, plays against type to superb effect. While Dan would like to believe his wife is the culpable, callous villain (everything sounds so mean in her Australian accent, he points out in an improvised line, adding, “It’s like British crossed with the devil”), Segel brings the character to life as a very human blend of meek and passive-aggressive. Weaving is the perfect sparring partner, squeezing the humour out of the fed-up spouse archetype, though her character is underserved in comparison to Segel’s, and she deserves a little more fleshing out—especially with Weaving in the role.

Taccone directs from a script by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney (an Internet comedy duo whose directorial debut, stoner comedy Pizza Movie, also premiered at SXSW). All three served as writers on Saturday Night Live, and there’s a welcome element of escalating absurdist sketch comedy at the heart of Over Your Dead Body. Still, after a battle of wits between Weaving and Segel, Taccone, Kocher, and McElhaney lose control of their darkly comedic tonal blend. When the criminal trio are added to the mix, the film initially receives a jolt of energy, but that’s stalled by an extended set piece centred on sexual assault as the escaped inmates try to recreate a “game” they played in prison. I’m not puritanically opposed to such topics being explored, but the smug way that rape is condensed to a punchline, and the way that punchline is then belaboured, destabilises the film. Couple that scene with a repetitive middle section, and it makes for a difficult watch.