Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (April 2, 2026)
Young(ish) A-list movie stars paired together for the first time would seem like a big deal. However, although 2025's Die My Love brought the first combination of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattison, it stiffed at the box office.
Nonetheless, those actors made me curious to see the movie. If nothing else, I wanted to judge if it deserved a better financial fate.
When he inherits a house in Montana, Jackson (Pattinson) and his pregnant girlfriend Grace (Lawrence) move there. After she gives birth to a boy, various problems emerge.
Jackson spends long periods away from home for unclear reasons and this prompts concern in Grace. Along with postpartum depression, Grace begins to deteriorate mentally.
As I watched Die, I could figure out why it failed to make biggity bucks in theaters. This one aimed firmly for the art house crowd and seemed too unconventional for a mass audience, even with two major stars involved.
Indeed, viewers will find the lead more like the Lawrence of 2017’s Mother! than the multiplex-filling Lawrence of the Hunger Games series. Nothing about Die aspires to sell itself to the masses.
I applaud both Lawrence and Pattinson for their willingness to make flicks that do nothing to burnish their star status. I just wish that Die offered a better project to take advantage of their talents.
This release’s case touts Die as the “eagerly-awaited return” of director Lynne Ramsey. Given that she only made five features over the 26 years prior to Die and none of them found much of an audience, I don’t know how eagerly many awaited her next effort.
My only experience with Ramsay’s filmography came from 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Although I admired the fact the flick attempted to confront issues related to troubled teenagers, the end product seemed heavy-handed and more like a horror film than a serious confrontation of the subjects at hand.
Expect more of that from Die. In theory, it could deliver a bracing view of the struggles among new mothers but instead, Ramsay makes it so over the top that it becomes a mess.
Ostensibly we see events from Grace’s unsteady POV, and that adds an aura of unreality to the tale. It can seem tough to separate actual events from those invented in Grace’s mind.
Rather than make this a clever way to invest in her mental collapse, Die just feels overbaked. Like Kevin, the movie seems more concerned with shocking the viewer than creating an involving drama.
Perhaps in response, Lawrence camps up a storm as Grace. She creates a cartoony view of mental illness that likely follows what Ramsay wanted but that does the character and the story no favors.
Pattinson gets the more subdued part but he also winds up without a lot to do. Die exists as Grace’s narrative and revolves almost entirely around her, so Jackson becomes ancillary for the most part.
Jackson pops up at times to act concerned or suspicious and not much more. He seems oddly passive as Grace becomes increasingly unstable, another reason the film doesn’t seem especially logical.
With folks like LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in tow, Die delivers an excellent supporting cast as well. They also find little to do with their underwritten parts, as this remains Lawrence’s show.
As she did with Kevin, Lynne Ramsay creates an overdone take on an important topic. This robs the subject of impact because the end product seems so absurd and off-putting.
