“But the film adeptly manages to avoid falling into complete cliché cringey preachery, because of:

A) Its frequently hilarious satirical comedic tone, pitched between the kind of dryly downplayed fantasy of What We Do in The Shadows, and the character-based comedy and drama of The Office (either the British or the American one).

B) Its surprising acuity in creating compelling characters you grow to genuinely care about, helped massively by all the actors delivering well-pitched performances that anchor the fantastical nature of the world of the film in a grounded emotional believability.

C) Its subtle world-building tantalisingly hinting at an abundance of potential story explorations of the interesting ramifications of this -ost-zombie universe.  Like how the Bible Belt parts of Texas view necrosapiens as literal demons unleashed from Hell. Or how necrosapiens of different races and classes do or don’t benefit from the un-equal status quo.  Or how the people opposed to – and afraid of – the necrosapiens around them, are sympathetic in the fear they have, because these former zombies were literally killing and eating people only a decade prior (a dramatic distinction in motivations for hatred, compared to the irrational and ignorant reasons for bigotry in real life).

That What Doesn’t Kill Us achieves more-or-less all of these ambitions within the constrictions of its obviously super low-budget is a remarkable feat.”