Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow is probably the most eerie example since Jordan Peele’s Get Out of a film acutely and unintentionally capturing America’s state of mind upon its release. There’s no biological pandemic involved in the story, but rather a deep existential “virus” that, formed by fear, spreads through a need to share one’s anxieties with others. Sounds like modern self-quarantining to me.

Despite what the title implies, you won’t find any jump scares or It Follows–inspired supernatural creatures hunting anyone here. However, that doesn’t make the movie any less unnerving or relatable. For the first 10 minutes, protagonist Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) wanders through her newly bought house. The camera shots are wide, beckoning us into her emotional malaise inside an empty and desolate house with nothing to do. Even the recommendations made by a friend over the phone feel unintentionally Covid-related, ranging from taking a walk to watching a movie. No, Amy will instead settle for heavy drinking while lying on the floor and listening to a record of Mozart’s Requiem in D, always a haunting selection.

When Amy’s friend Jane (Jane Adams) arrives, things don’t look much better. Amy is doing even weirder antics, from leaf blowing her plants to wondering whether a leather company could turn her skin into a jacket, but most disturbingly, she’s convinced that she will die tomorrow. Jane just thinks Amy is overacting to stress. That is, until she goes home and finds herself consumed by this idea. Visiting the home of her brother Jason (Chris Messina), where a party is being thrown for his wife, Susan (Katie Aselton), with their friends Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim), Jane can’t help but blurt out this idea with self-assured conviction. Thus a weird conversation about dolphin sex becomes a breeding ground for the fear to find new hosts.

She Dies Tomorrow feels low-key and surreal with its slice of life storytelling. Only a handful of characters are featured, so the plot is driven more by their reactions to the ideological virus over a single night rather than how far it can spread or be contained. The neon visuals occasionally give off an impression of something paranormal watching Amy and Jane, but nothing is ever confirmed. The closest explanation involves a series of flashbacks of Amy and her romantic partner, Craig (Kentucker Audley), whose happy vacation is undone by a brief interaction with the wrong person.

When the virus “clicks” per se, it manifests itself as a sea of saturated visuals and loud musical cues that drown out everything beyond the host’s face. Characters appear in a state of misery or terror that can’t help but feel euphoric at the realization that some kind of end is nigh. However, everyone deals with it in different ways. Jane, under medical examination, compares this feeling to a nihilistic sixth sense, while Brian and Tilly use it to confess dissatisfaction with their relationship. It’s simultaneously a new lease on life and fear of the inevitable, depending on how much one views their mortality as a referendum on what they’ve managed, or failed, to accomplish.

For a film made before the coronavirus reached sci-fi-levels of bad, its portrayal of anxiety certainly nails the daily emotional trauma of living through these times. Sheil’s Zen-like reactions in particular feel almost like an avatar for the viewer, resigned to her tragedy’s horridness despite any comforting words about things getting better. Anyone that’s been keeping up with the news since March, or just the past four years in general, can relate. Since the actors lack a Hollywood-esque glamor, save for a surprising appearance by Michelle Rodriguez in the third act, these all-is-meaningless beliefs come across as disturbingly liberating. The dry, dreamlike nature of Seimetz’s shots only adds to that sense of unease.

Seimetz, who starred in 2013’s Upstream Color, is no stranger to surreal films that leave very few answers to the weird themes it proposes. With She Dies Tomorrow, she definitely captures the feeling at an equally surreal time where circumstances have confined both moviegoing and living experiences to the seclusion of our homes. This lack of comfort and the fear of what tragedies the next day will bring haunt us just as it does her ensemble, making the story feel emotionally relevant. Expect people to be watching this one decades later for a microcosm of what 2020 felt like.