Sam Rockwell Fights the Future Present.

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Starring Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Juno Temple

Released February 13th, 2026

Rated R

When a disheveled man wearing what looks to be a clear raincoat bursts into a diner in Los Angeles and starts shouting about the end of the world, the patrons figure he’s just some crazy guy causing havoc. He tells them he’s from the future and only the people in this diner can help him save the world. To their disbelief he explains that he’s traveled back in time to this very diner many times before, trying to find the correct combination of people who can accompany him back to the future and help him save the world. Every time has ended in failure, but he’s determined to keep trying until he finds success. 

Through violent coercion (he’s got a bomb strapped to his chest) he assembles a rag tag crew from the diner, including Mark (Michael Peña), a meek schoolteacher, Janet (Zazie Beetz), Mark’s co-worker and girlfriend, Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother, and Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a forlorn young woman dressed in a princess costume. These people have a ton of questions for the bomb-toting, rain slick wearing gentleman, and as he details his fight against a future ruled by artificial intelligence, they slowly begin to believe his story in spite of themselves. 

We learn about the characters through flashbacks that reveal why Mark and Janet are so meek (dealing with mind-controlled teenagers!), why Ingrid is wearing a princess costume (it’s her day job!), and how Susan knows more than she’s letting on about the situation they all find themselves in (her dead, cloned son!). There is a long passage of the film that deals with desensitization surrounding school shootings. In this universe, they have become prevalent to the point of being considered nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I could see some audiences being upset by this commentary, but I would counter that it makes more sense to be upset about actual school shootings rather than a movie pointing out (in an admittedly crass fashion) that our society should be more outraged about them than we currently seem to be. 

Because this is a film with a lot on its mind and it doesn’t just tackle one subject. There’s a sequence during which Ingrid’s boyfriend Tim (Tom Taylor), who has been wearing these virtual reality goggles, says he’s breaking up with her so he can spend more time in the virtual world. Tim tells her it’s preferable to live in the virtual world because there is no pain or hardship or failure or loss. This recalls the worry some have had over the years about people becoming addicted to Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games like World of Warcraft or even something back in the 1980s like Dungeons and Dragons. 

I do not consider Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die to be a technophobe movie. It’s one of the only recent films that deals with the dangers of A.I. that didn’t make me roll my eyes. Sam Rockwell’s character says his goal is not to stop A.I. (which he calls an inevitability) but to put some guardrails on it. That seems to be a pretty fair way to look at what our relationship with this controversial technology is going to be. We’ve been raised on a diet of science fiction stories telling us that artificial intelligence is the boogeyman, but what if it’s not that simple? 

I know that Sam Rockwell is an Academy Award winning actor with legions of fans, but please allow me to gush for a moment about how darn splendid he is in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. This is one of my favorite performances of his career (though I will always have a soft spot for his appearance in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in 1990). As the unnamed man who claims he is a time traveler from the future, he is by turns pathetic, unhinged, and hilarious. Rockwell sells the unpredictability of his character with miles of charisma. Juno Temple, Michael Peña, and Zazie Beetz are all clearly having a good time with their characters in this crazy movie, but along with Rockwell, it’s Haley Lu Richardson who really stands out. She’s never been better and it helps that her character Ingrid is so well written. 

Gore Verbinski has directed many hit films over the course of his career, including the ambitious animated Rango, the terrifying remake of The Ring, and the first three films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. These successes didn’t prevent him from being thrown into what’s known as “Director’s Jail” after his big screen version of The Lone Ranger (starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer) was a box office bomb. In the thirteen years since then, he’s only made one small horror film, A Cure for Wellness, which was met with a collective shrug from audiences. It remains to be seen if Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die will mark a return to box office success for the director, but as a worthwhile work of art, I’d say it’s a welcome comeback. 

Matthew Robinson’s script takes a big concept and some heady themes and throws them into an irreverent blender, resulting in a comedy that’s as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. The closest comparison I can think of to this film would be Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, itself a dark comedy about a dystopian future and a guy who’s caught up in a story that’s bigger than his experience. Some of the humor is a bit sophomoric for my taste and the ending drags on a bit too long, but these are nitpicks. I enjoyed this one.