After a man is murdered, his consciousness travels through the bodies of his friends to protect them from his killer.
Every Time I Die is a surprisingly well-executed film. While it lacks the intensity and pacing that one would expect from a thriller, there is astonishingly good depth to the setup despite providing so few details. This is the type of psychological thriller that is best to go in with as little information as possible.
There are two main arcs of the plot, one taking place in the current timeline, and one that revolves around a traumatic event that occurred in the protagonist's childhood. While the two lines are connected on the technical side of things, these are otherwise completely independent of each other. The story structure is where the film is highly impressive. Robi Michael takes on the roles of director, producer, and screenplay writer, and puts forth a protagonist that is a complete mystery to the audience and manages to use that unknown to sow the seeds of deception with an unreliable narrator.
It allows the film to move in a non-linear fashion, while still being entirely linear, using time skips and then looking back at what occurred during the skips. It forms a very strong sense of curiosity from the viewer as we are thrown in the deep end of the effects, as we try to determine what the causes are. There is a lot of misdirection thrown in, with a mix of blackouts, flashbacks, and dream sequences, but leaving ambiguity around the relevance of any the scene in general.
There is so much about Every Time I Die that is ambiguous, with Robi Michael choosing to not go the Hollywood route of spelling everything out. Many of the scenes have minimal dialogue and an unspecified direction in the narrative that works to build an emotionally-focused portrayal of our protagonist. From a visual standpoint, there are quite a few visual effects dotted throughout the film, to create a visceral visual experience. The CGI is seamless, with some interesting perspective shifts.
Every Time I Die takes it's time to set itself up. There are a full 40 minutes before the active plot line really gets started, at which point it starts to snowball and accelerates very quickly in the third act. It does mean that the final payoff doesn't quite get enough time to fully sink in (especially when everything isn't completely spelt out). The premise, however, creates an engaging story, with a great ending reveal. A slow burn, with an ambiguity that may confuse a few people, but ultimately an intriguing story and structure.