Movie Review: He Never Died

By Tim Murr

WARNING: SPOILERS!

The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
—Genesis Chapter 4, The Bible NIV

There are no clear motivations available in the Biblical text as to why the Lord was unpleased with Cain’s offering or why Cain would be inspired to kill his brother over it.

Some speculate that Cain was evil or that Cain had not followed the Lord’s instructions for sacrifice or had not brought his choice portions the way Abel did.

What is clear is that Cain was cast out into a land where he would not be in the Lord’s presence and be a restless wanderer who would never bear fruit in whatever he did. And yet he’d be protected. We know that Cain had a son, Enoch, and built a city named after him, but what of Cain’s ultimate fate? What if he never died?

What happened to Cain, festering in his city outside of the presence of God, while his parents had a third son, Seth whose lineage would eventually bring forth Noah? What is Cain’s legacy, cursed to wander, restless? Imagine the crushing weight of history. What he would have survived, what he would have witnessed. What kind of man would several thousand years of cruel history shape?

In He Never Died, writer/director Jason Krawczyk imagines a Cain, known as Jack to those around him, as a solitary renaissance man who’s pretty much seen and done it all and carries a fair number of dark secrets. Krawczyk had punk rock renaissance man Henry Rollins in mind when he wrote the part and I don’t think anyone else could have brought Jack to life. If you’re familiar with Rollins as spoken word performer or author you’ll have a sense of his approach to the role. He’s hilarious as the straight faced, humorless, and tired Jack.

When the story opens, we find Jack spending his days sleeping, walking, going to church for bingo, going to the same diner every day, and meeting a medical intern to acquire the blood he craves. Krawczyk sets a very deliberate pace, fully immersing the viewer into Jack’s world and giving us a good look at how things work, before introducing conflict.

One of the smart things Krawczyk does is let the plot take a back seat to the character drama. Jack beating on two thugs to save his blood connection and meeting the teenage daughter he never knew about are wholly separate and random events in Jack’s life, and why shouldn’t they be? He’s barely moved by anything he sees and experiences. After all, he has thousands of years of violence behind him. Would he even question needing to beat someone senseless? Andrea (played by Jordan Todosey) isn’t even his first kid. Besides Enoch, Jack/Cain could have had hundreds of kids through the years, and probably did.

Jack plays at having a cold detachedness from humanity, haunted by an ever-present God. He’s an immortal that no human can understand, but when things go south, he finds it difficult to walk away. Rollins summons up this conflict, swinging in a moment from an almost fool to psychotic murderer to vengeful protector.

He Never Died doesn’t just work as a dark horror comedy; it’s also an emotional human drama about absentee fathers and not living up to your father’s expectations, and doesn’t skimp on the action.

Krawczyk doesn’t spell everything out for us, either. He leaves plenty of mystery and loose ends for us to consider, not unlike Cain’s lone chapter in Genesis.

He Never Died is available on VOD and iTunes.