Lede

A film that yells “the future is terrifying” while looking like it time-travelled here from the past.

Hermit Off Script

This is the kind of AI movie that arrives puffing its chest like it’s discovered fire, then spends the next two hours explaining smoke. It wants to warn you about the danger of artificial intelligence, but it does it through people who are already so unhinged that the AI feels like the only adult in the room. I sat there thinking: is this a cautionary tale, or a very long audition tape for “look how loudly we can panic”? And the boredom… the boredom is real. Not the “slow burn” boredom. The “if I were at home, I’d press pause and go make tea, then forget to come back” boredom. It plays like something designed for streaming, where your phone can rescue you from the film’s own sermon. In a cinema, it feels like being held hostage by a concept that won’t stop talking. The maddest part is how small its imagination feels. AI is the shiny new bogeyman, fine, but the vibe is weirdly retro: a tech panic montage that could have been made twenty years ago if anyone had bothered to believe chatbots would become a normal Tuesday. It doesn’t feel like “tomorrow”. It feels like “yesterday’s idea of tomorrow”, stapled to a loud present-day wrapper. So yes: a nutjob AI movie. Not because it is daring, but because it confuses volume for vision, and repetition for relevance.

GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE | Official Trailer

AI Panic Meets Time Travel Chaos

A mild mannered video game tester is suddenly recruited by a group of time travellers from the future who claim humanity is on the brink of collapse because of a rogue artificial intelligence. Their plan is simple in theory and absurd in practice: go back to the present and stop the chain of small, seemingly harmless events that eventually lead to the AI gaining control.

What follows is a chaotic race through time where every attempt to “fix” the future only creates stranger consequences in the present. As the reluctant hero jumps between timelines, he begins to realise that the real problem might not be the machines at all, but the unpredictable and irrational behaviour of humans themselves.

The film mixes sci-fi time travel with dark comedy, turning the usual AI apocalypse warning into a frantic series of miscalculations, awkward heroics, and the uncomfortable idea that humanity might be perfectly capable of ruining the future without any help from artificial intelligence.

Cast and credits

Director: Gore Verbinski
Writers: Matthew Robinson
Genre: Science fiction, comedy, time travel
Main cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, Patti Harrison
Composer: Lorne Balfe
Production company / studio: New Republic Pictures, Studio Babelsberg
Runtime: 134 minutes
Release year and platform: 2025 premiere (festival circuit), wider theatrical release February 2026, distributed in cinemas by Neon

What does not make sense

• It frames AI as an existential threat, then spends so long on human chaos that the threat starts to feel like a mercy.
• It sells urgency, but runs for long enough that your urgency dies of old age.
• It aims for “timely”, yet lands on “already dated”, like it was written by someone who fears smartphones more than systems.
• It tries to be a warning siren, but the script’s constant shouting turns the siren into wallpaper noise.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Wide US release is listed as February 13, 2026, while some sources still badge it as a 2025 festival-premiere film. [Rotten Tomatoes] [Wikipedia].
2. Runtime is 134 minutes (2 hr 14 min) – which is brave for a film flirting with “one good idea, told 6 times”. [Box Office Mojo].
3. Worldwide gross is $7,613,581, with a domestic opening of $3,644,275. [Box Office Mojo].
4. Rotten Tomatoes lists 83 per cent from 197 reviews, and 86 per cent audience score from 500+ verified ratings. [Rotten Tomatoes].
5. Wikipedia lists a $20 million budget and about $8 million box office – which, if accurate, is a pricey way to shout “put your phone down”. [Wikipedia].

The sketch

Scene 1: “The Future Arrives”
Panel: A diner booth. A frazzled time traveller points at a buzzing phone on the table.
Dialogue:

• “AI will end civilisation!”
• “Mate, your battery is at 2 per cent.”

Scene 2: “Cinema Experience”
Panel: A cinema seat. A viewer stares at the screen while their soul floats gently out of their body holding a teacup.
Dialogue:

• “It’s only been 90 minutes…”
• “And yet I have aged 12 years.”

Scene 3: “The Big Warning”
Panel: A giant warning sign reads “DANGER”. Next to it, a calm robot holds a clipboard labelled “Human Behaviour”.
Dialogue:

• Human: “The AI is insane!”
• Robot: “I’m taking notes. This is impressive.”

What to watch, not the show

• Incentives: “topical AI” sells quicker than “boring governance”.
• Tech moral panics: fear is easier to market than nuance.
• Cinema economics: a big screen is wasted if the film plays like a long episode.
• Attention collapse: films now compete with the device they are warning you about.
• Franchise-era habits: stretching a premise to feature length because the release calendar demands it.

The Hermit take

Good premise, overstretched sermon.
If you want to scare people about AI, start by earning their attention.

Keep or toss

Keep / Toss
Keep the high-concept hook and any sparks of satire.
Toss the bloat, the nagging, and the sense that the film is shadowboxing a 2010s idea of “the future”.

Sources

• Rotten Tomatoes page: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_luck_have_fun_dont_die
• Box Office Mojo totals and release data: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1341338/credits/?ref_=bo_tt_tab
• Wikipedia overview and release dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Luck%2C_Have_Fun%2C_Don%27t_Die
• The Guardian review (UK release date context): https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/12/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die-movie-review
• Reuters Berlin festival piece: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/sci-fi-film-good-luck-have-fun-dont-die-warns-ai-with-comic-twist-2026-02-13/
• AP review (runtime and tone): https://apnews.com/article/8c9e0815b189a2395bedf58c704cc239
• Little White Lies review excerpt: https://lwlies.com/reviews/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die