Fantastic Fest 2025 Review: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

Sam Rockwell and cast gear up in Gore Verbinski’s genre-bending Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, a Fantastic Fest 2025 secret screening standout.

For the final secret screening of Fantastic Fest 2025, audiences were treated to Gore Verbinski’s latest, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die—a genre-bending time-travel odyssey that reminds us just how dangerously tethered we are to our devices. Set for theatrical release on January 30, the film takes a wild swing at blending sci-fi spectacle, biting social commentary, and the kind of absurdist humor that makes it feel right at home at this festival.

The premise kicks off in a Los Angeles diner, where a man from the future (Sam Rockwell, in peak form) assembles an unlikely crew to stop an encroaching AI threat. Alongside Rockwell, a stacked ensemble—Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, and Rizwan Manji—anchor a narrative that plays like a futuristic heist stitched together with satire and dread. Each character gets their own chapter-style introduction, deepening the stakes before their stories converge into a chaotic, neon-drenched showdown.

Verbinski doesn’t settle for a straightforward sci-fi. He folds in bursts of animation, horror flourishes, surreal action, and comedic beats. What emerges is a frenetic but surprisingly cohesive commentary on our fractured attention spans and the casual numbness with which we treat violence, technology, and each other. A recurring gag about high schoolers texting through tragedy underscores the film’s darker truths—sometimes we’re too distracted to notice the world burning around us.

If Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die feels maximalist, that’s the point. It’s loud, funny, bleak, and visually intoxicating—a reminder of Verbinski’s knack for spectacle that still has something on its mind. By the end, the title feels less like a genre gimmick and more like a survival mantra for the way we live now.

I give Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die a 4 out of 5—an ideal festival closer, equal parts bombastic entertainment and biting reflection. When it lands in theaters this January, expect it to ignite plenty of debate about what happens when time runs out and no one’s paying attention.

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chandhry, Tom Taylor, Juno Temple

Directed by: Gore Verbinski

Written by: Matthew Robinson

Produced by: Gore Verbinski, Robert Kulzer, Erwin Stoff, Oly Obst, Denise Chamian