I saw the trailer for The Dead Don't Die when it first came out and thought it looked hilarious. I filed it away, promising myself someday I'd watch it, but I never got around to it. (It doesn't help that my wife and kids don't like zombie movies.) Then I'd see a reference to it somewhere and promise myself once again to make time. Well, I finally did.

Set in rural Centerville, Pennsylvania -- although very much not the Centerville, PA, close to my hometown -- the movie focuses on a couple of local police officers: Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray), Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny). When the movie begins, they're dealing with typical small-town things, like a local vagrant, Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), who allegedly stole a chicken from a local racist, Farmer Frank (Steve Buscemi). On the news, we hear reports about an ongoing debate over polar fracking, which apparently has shifted the Earth's axis and is causing unusual things to happen.

Like, you know, the dead to rise.

Borrowing heavily from George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, to which it makes quite a few subtle references, The Dead Don't Die has a very understated, deadpan sense of humor. The characters also have some self-awareness that they are in a movie; at least, Cliff and Ronnie recognize the movie's theme song on the radio, and later they discuss reading the script. (Apparently, the director gave one of them a more complete copy.)

Polar fracking, by the way, is as good an explanation for zombies as any movie has offered to date. And, speaking of polar, the movie moves at a glacial pace, particularly for the first hour, but it suits the tone admirably well.

When the dead begin to rise, the first victims are a waitress and a cleaning lady (Eszter Balint and Rosal Colon) at the local diner, a particularly gruesome feast that ends oddly when the two zombies (Iggy Pop and Sara Driver) start craving, not brains, but coffee. The discovery of the bodies the next morning brings in the local constabulary, and it's Ronnie who first posits the theory -- after eliminating a wild animal, or several wild animals, as the culprit -- that perhaps zombies, or ghouls, are responsible.

Like those first two coffee-obsessed zombies, this variety of shambling undead has varied obsessions, from candy to free cable to chardonnay -- an interesting quirk that doesn't pay into the plot.

Wielding a formidable katana among the ghastly walkers is Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), a decidedly odd and apparently Scottish/Buddhist mortician who's new to town. Other notable residents of Centerville include affable everyman Hank Thompson (Danny Glover), knowledgable store clerk Bobby Wiggins (Caleb Landry Jones), hotel owner Danny Perkins (Larry Fessenden), local newscaster Posie Juarez (Rosie Perez), and corpse in a cell Mallory O'Brien (Carol Kane). Zoe (Selena Gomez), Jack (Austin Butler) and Zach (Luka Sabbat) -- a trio of "big-city hipsters" from Cleveland -- are just passing through but stop for the night in the local hotel. And there's a recurring bit with a trio of kids at a juvenile detention center that doesn't go anywhere.

It's a strong cast, with a few big names in fairly minor roles. Frankly, the movie is carried by Murray and Driver; everything else is just sauce.

The Dead Don't Die doesn't have the over-the-top, action-packed laughs of Zombieland or the smart British humor and clever plotting of Shaun of the Dead, but it's entertaining in its own, very dry way. Some people will be bored by the slow pacing, some will be annoyed by the unnecessary fourth-wall breaks, and some will be spitting nails because an obvious caricature of a MAGA character is portrayed as so unlikable. There's an unexpected, brief and ultimately unrelated alien tangent that is just ... weird.

Ultimately, the movie is funny, in an lowkey sort of way. The ending is grim. It's all a bit hopeless, which is probably more realistic that most zombie movies in the event of an actual apocalypse. And, heck, someone even ate Selena Gomez.