Review: In the dread-soaked 'She Dies Tomorrow,' director Amy Seimetz finds a perfect metaphor for our contagiously anxious times

The new movies available to us during the COVID-19 pandemic — not the blockbusters the studios are kicking down the road, but the indies in “virtual cinemas,” or streaming on-demand, or playing in drive-ins or the few theaters that reopened early — will fall into two categories: Time capsules of what was before the virus, and chillingly prescient allegories for our unsettled times.

Writer-director Amy Seimetz’ suspense drama “She Dies Tomorrow” lands squarely into that second category — a tight, doom-laden creeper that speaks to our fears of isolation and contagion with devastating silences.

When we first meet Amy, played by Kate Lyn Sheil, we see a close-up of her eye — mascara streaked, tears welling up, filled with fear and resignation. We fill in some details about her, that she’s a recovering alcoholic who’s just moved into a new house, and that one of her friends, Jane (Jane Adams), is apparently her AA sponsor. What we hear Amy saying, over and over, is “I’m going to die tomorrow.”

Amy says this to Jane, who comes over to make sure she’s OK. She’s not OK, and soon Amy’s belief that she’s going to die becomes Jane’s fear. Jane starts behaving oddly, and fully believes she’s going to die tomorrow — and she takes this information to her brother, Jason (Chris Messina) and his wife Susan (Katie Aselton), who are celebrating Susan’s birthday with friends Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim).

While Jane is spreading her message to her friends, the movie takes us back to Amy, who decides to spend her last hours riding dune buggies and getting stoned with a guy (Adam Wingard) who rents her the buggy. She also flashes back to a date with Craig (Kentucker Audley), where this might all have started.

Seimetz is a jack-of-all-trades filmmaker, working both the indie and studio system for her benefit, in the tradition of John Cassavetes. Reportedly, she paid for “She Dies Tomorrow” off her earnings from starring in the “Pet Sematary” remake. (She also co-created and co-directed most of “The Girlfriend Experience,” and played the prudish relation of Emily Dickinson in “Wild Nights With Emily.”)

With “She Dies Tomorrow,” Seimetz shows herself a vividly experimental filmmaker and an expert calibrator of modulated suspense. As she follows Amy, then Jane, then other characters, the unseen menace of transmittable fear and dread becomes a palpable presence, an invisible fog that permeates the movie. Seimetz’ visual touches, like the flashing red and blue lights that signal the fear cooties doing their work, are genius in their direct, simple ability to convey terror.

For all the elements of fear, and more than a little blood, it’s not quite right to call “She Dies Tomorrow” a horror movie. There aren’t any sudden shocks, no explicit gore, and death is a concept to consider than a plot point to show in detail. But it’s a movie that burrows under the skin and bounces around the brain, a parasite feeding off of our pandemic-battered psyches.

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‘She Dies Tomorrow’

★★★1/2

Available Friday, August 7, as a video-on-demand rental on most platforms. Rated R for language, some sexual references, drug use and bloody images. Running time: 85 minutes.