Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is Unhinged and Delightfully Sharp

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

★ ★ ★ ½

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is as fun a movie as its title is quirky. Like the film, it’s intentionally over-the-top. This is a dark comedy sci-fi thriller that’s more than just an adequate popcorn muncher. It’s a darkly profound commentary on our reliance on technology, especially our ever-growing dependence on AI. It even pokes at one of the most disturbing trends of our time—school shootings. It’s not that it pokes fun at them that’s intriguing. It’s the way it does it—with just enough thought-provoking conspiracy theory to make it land.

Sam Rockwell, Michael Peña, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Asim Chaudhry and Zazie Beetz
© 2026 Briarcliff Entertainment

The easiest way to break down the plot is this: The Man From the Future (Sam Rockwell), I’ll refer to him as “The Man” from here on, has traveled back in time to stop AI from destroying the future. He bursts into a Los Angeles diner with a clear plastic garbage bag covering a homemade copper wiring system strapped to several makeshift devices. He looks like a homeless man who robbed the last Radio Shack on earth, stripped every device he could for parts and strapped them around his body. He holds a button, tells the diners he’s not there to rob the place but that he’s holding a bomb.

The Man is there to recruit seven people to save the future. He’s done this 117 times with various combinations of the diner’s 47 patrons. He’s gotten to know them well in his recurring diner visits, and tells them things no one else would know to try to convince them he’s not crazy. For example, one diner’s favorite movie is Groundhog Day. The Man is in his own version of that film, repeating the last hours before the apocalyptic AI goes online. He needs to plug a USB drive from decades in the future into the AI with safeguards future scientists have coded.

When his mission is a failure, he pushes the button and time resets back to when he first bursts through the diner. From there, the film just gets nuts in a way that simply just works.

A princess birthday gone wrong
© 2026 Briarcliff Entertainment

This movie is bonkers, bizarre and dark as hell—in the best way. It’s a tough road to make humor out of school shootings. It doesn’t make light of them but highlights our numbness to them and gives a tongue-in-cheek nudge toward a possible government conspiracy. I won’t spoil how it unfolds, only to say I thought it worked well and fit the film’s narrative.

This is Rockwell’s movie, and he owns every moment he’s on screen. The Man is an exhausted character, with a pessimistic optimism in that he’s preparing for the worst-case scenario while believing each new set of diners might be the ones to finally save the world. He’s delightfully sarcastic, full of wisecracks but never loses his deep-seated sense of humanity. He knows the importance of his mission.

Zombie teenagers
© 2026 Briarcliff Entertainment

Where the film loses steam is when it interweaves the backstory of several characters. To the film’s credit, the backstories are told well to the point you want them to continue. When the film cuts back to the bleak future, it takes a moment to reacclimate. Fortunately, it keeps finding its footing each time.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die shows us how connected we are with technology, yet how disconnected we’ve become with each other. It presents a pathway we may be facing and asks: Are we too late to change our fate?

If you find yourself in a diner and a guy rushes in wearing a garbage bag of wires and electronic parts and tells you your favorite movie, put your coffee down and raise your hand. And remember, no matter how bleak the future, don’t forget to have fun.