action, Artie Wilkinson-Hunt, Asim Chaudhry, comedy, Daniel Barnett, Fantastic Fest, film festivals, Georgia Goodman, Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die, Gore Verbinski, Haley Lu Richardson, Juno Temple, Los Angeles, Michael Pena, movies, Sam Rockwell, sci-fi, science fiction, Zazie Beetz
February 22, 2026
by Carla Hay
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States during various time dimensions, the sci-fi action comedy film “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people, Asians and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A disheveled time traveler arrives from the future to recruit people to stop an artificial intelligence (A.I.) apocalypse.
Culture Audience: “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and wacky apocalyptic comedies that might be too convoluted for some people.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” seems to be going for a similar wacky dimension-traveling vibe that was in the Oscar-winning 2022 movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” isn’t an Oscar-worthy movie, but this sci-fi action comedy has some impressive creativity in its story about a time traveler who recruits people to stop an A.I. apocalypse. This overstuffed movie falls short of greatness when it gets preachy about technology addiction. Some of the movie’s main characters are compelling, while other main characters are woefully underdeveloped.
Directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of Fantastic Fest. The movie takes place in the United States in various time dimensions. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” was actually filmed in Cape Town, South Africa.
The concept of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is quite basic (people try to stop an apocalypse from happening), but this 134-minute movie puffs up the concept with long chase scenes and backstory flashbacks for some of the characters. The visual effects are very good for a relatively low-budget independent film. Some of the cast members’ performances can hold viewer interest when the movie zigs and zags before it hurtles to an action-packed conclusion.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” begins by showing what looks like just another night at Norms, a kitschy-looking Los Angeles diner that wasn’t created for this movie but exists in real life. A disheveled man (played by Sam Rockwell), who’s wearing a bomb strapped to his tattered clothing, suddenly bursts into the diner and announces to everyone there that he is from the future. The movie never reveals what this man’s name is. In the movie’s end credits, he’s listed only as the Man From the Future.
The Man from the Future says, “This isn’t a robbery. I am from the future. And all of this has gone horribly wrong.” The Man From the Future then starts rambling: “Social media has eroded your dignity.” He says that in the future, too many people became addicted to looking at their phones in the morning, so they became bedridden and didn’t want to do anything else, so society collapsed.
“How many of you know any phone numbers?,” asks the Man from the Future, in reference to people not having to remember phone numbers that can be programmed in phones for automatic dialing and caller ID. The Man From the Future takes some people’s phones out of their hands and tosses the phones into some drinking glasses. “I’m looking for recruits,” he says. “Humanity can be saved. This is where the revolution begins.”
At first, customers in the diner mostly ignore the Man From the Future because he appears to be a mentally ill homeless person. But he starts to get more aggressive when he takes out a knife, which prompts concern among the diner’s customers and employees. The Man From the Future also announces that he has a bomb strapped to his clothes.
The Man From the Future further explains that this is the 117th time that he’s traveled to this diner at this exact same moment, with the exact same people inside the diner. He says he needs the right combination of people. He also mentions that he already knows which people in the diner have failed to be useful in this mission. The Man From the Future is aware that someone in the diner has called police to report him, so he knows his time is limited before the police arrive.
The Man From the Future chooses seven people to go on this mission with him: children’s party entertainer Ingrid (played by Haley Lu Richardson), homemaker Susan (played by Juno Temple), schoolteacher Mark (played by Michael Peña), schoolteacher Janet (played by Zazie Beetz), rideshare driver Scott (played by Asim Chaudhry) and two other people whose occupations are unknown: Marie (played by Georgia Goodman) and Bob (played by Daniel Barnett). Mark and Janet are a couple who work at the same high school, where Mark is a substitute teacher, and Janet is a member of the school’s permanent faculty.
Ingrid and Susan are the only ones in this group who volunteered. The rest of these “recruits” are being forced to participate in whatever the Man From the Future has in mind. The Man From the Future really didn’t want Ingrid to be part of this group and initially rejected her, but he reluctantly decided she could be one of the “recruits.” The movie eventually reveals why the Man From the Future is standoffish to Ingrid, who is dressed in a fairytale princess costume that she usually wears as part of her job.
The rest of the plot in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” won’t be described in this review because it would give away too many details. However, it’s enough to say that some of the group’s adversaries include phone-addicted teenagers who become zombies; giant mutant cats; and a 9-year-old boy (played by Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) whom the Man From the Future says is the person who will be responsible for creating the A.I. that causes the apocalypse. And not everyone in this group of seven recruits makes it out alive.
The backstories of the Man From the Future, Ingrid and Susan have the most significance to what happens in the movie. Susan is grieving over the tragic loss of a family member. Ingrid, who has mysterious nosebleeds, is also recovering from heartbreak. Temple and Richardson bring a certain depth to their performances that make Susan and Ingrid stand out from the other recruits.
Rockwell’s performance as the Man From the Future is effective but somewhat of a rehash of the types of sarcastic eccentrics that he tends to portray in action movies. Chaudhry’s depiction of Scott should gets some laughs from viewers, since Scott is the token goofball of the group. Mark and Susan are a couple with opposite personalities—he’s insecure; she’s confident—but their characters are so underdeveloped, their backstory isn’t very interesting.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” has a lot of technology shaming and lays on this shaming very thick. Smartphones, computer tablets and virtual reality headsets are depicted as the paraphernalia that are the most common gateways to technology addiction. People under the age of 30 are especially portrayed as the worst offenders in spreading technology addiction. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” could’ve done a better job at lampooning the older adults who financially benefit from technology addiction.
The movie also skirts the issue that the technology addiction portrayed in the movie isn’t so much about the technology but about the way technology is being used for the addiction’s underlying motivation: an escape from reality to a world that the user thinks is better than the real world. With all the running around that the movie’s characters do to “save the world,” one big issue is ignored: Even if A.I. and other technology were erased, this erasure wouldn’t guarantee that people would be happier with their lives, and it wouldn’t guarantee that people couldn’t find other ways to escape from reality. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” somewhat fumbles its intended messaging about technology, but the movie is entertaining enough to watch for people who just want to see a sci-fi action spectacle that isn’t as clever as it wants to be.
Briarcliff Entertainment released “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” in U.S. cinemas on February 13, 2026. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on February 2 and February 10, 2026.