Gore Verbinski has reaches the apex of filmmaking by anyone’s standards in this industry. A critical and commercial success made waves with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which led Verbinski to helm several smash sequels and billions of dollars in earnings for Disney’s flagship adventure franchise.

Having found ongoing success with star Johnny Depp, Verbinski took their collaboration into the realm of animation. The result was the Oscar-winning animated triumph of Rango. where Verbinski balanced spectacle with subversive wit.

After nearly a decade away from the audiences that he’s so deftly entertained, Verbinski returns with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. The film marks not just a creative resurgence, but a timely, daring leap into sci-fi satire at a moment when real-world anxieties about artificial intelligence are escalating rapidly (A.I. Tom Cruise Vs. Brad Pitt being fresh on our minds).

Things kick of at 10:10 p.m., as an unkempt man clad in plastic and wires bursts into a crowded Los Angeles diner with a dire warning: the world ends tonight. He claims to be from the future. He needs a team. And he has tried this before—116 times, to be exact.

Sam Rockwell plays The Man From The Future with extraordinary control and charisma. He’s not a stoic machine like The Terminator, but a frayed, fast-talking prophet who knows exactly how each person in the diner will react—because he has lived this moment over and over again. The film cleverly blends the reset mechanics of Groundhog Day with the fatalistic time-loop tension of 12 Monkeys, creating a structure that feels both familiar and invigoratingly modern.

This is Rockwell’s show, and he rises to the occasion with one of the most compelling performances of his career. There’s humor in his exasperation, but also a quiet ache in a man burdened with remembering every failed attempt. If awards voters are paying attention to genre work this season, this is the kind of layered, high-wire performance that merits serious consideration.

Writer Matthew Robinson smartly builds an ensemble of unlikely revolutionaries: Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother offered technological solace; Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), educators resisting the steady encroachment of digital dependency in their classrooms; Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), whose aversion to technology borders on allegorical; and several others whose seemingly ordinary lives make them ideal candidates for extraordinary resistance. Verbinski takes time to explore how each has been reshaped—sometimes damaged—by technological overreach, grounding the sci-fi premise in human consequence.

Although momentum occasionally softens during the flashbacks, the narrative device remains engaging as each reset deepens our understanding of the characters and sharpens the stakes. Rather than feeling repetitive, the structure accumulates emotional weight. Each iteration builds on the last, refining strategy, amplifying urgency, and drawing us closer to the elusive configuration that might finally change the outcome. The repetition becomes a feature, not a flaw.

Visually and tonally, the film hums with a rebellious streak reminiscent of They Live—high-concept science fiction infused with satire and bite. The script nods to genre architects like Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick, but the concerns here feel unmistakably contemporary. The antagonist isn’t a distant metallic overlord; it’s algorithmic manipulation, social media distortion, and the hollow replication of human experience.

What resonates most is the film’s timing. At a moment when A.I. is rapidly reshaping industries—including Hollywood itself—Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die feels less like speculative fiction and more like cultural commentary with teeth. Yet Verbinski never lets the message overwhelm the entertainment. The action sequences crackle, the humor lands, and the ensemble delivers across the board.

This is a film with ambition and personality—two qualities that feel increasingly hard to get greenlit in a world of algorithm-made studio decisions (driven more and more by A.I. ironically). Some may argue the structural narrative plays a bit clunky, but it does so in service of a story that is inventive, urgent, and oddly emotionally grounded. For the first time since Rango, Verbinski returns to the meta playground with something that feels both alive and unique.

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski
SCREENWRITER: Matthew Robinson
CAST: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chandhry, Tom Taylor, Juno Temple

Briarcliff Entertainment released Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die in theaters on February 13, 2026. Grade: 4.5/5