When I looked at the lineup for last month’s Tribeca Film Festival, one movie title really caught my eye: Death Boom. And once I discovered it was not just another horror film but actually a documentary predicting an impending crisis for Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964), of which I am but one, it got my attention and I asked for a screener.

The brainchild of horror movie maven Eli Roth and documentary director Jessica Chandler with help from Leonardo DiCaprio and his Appian Way productions, among others, Death Boom explores the industry of death, its past, its present, its future and the dangers, environmental and otherwise, plus sheer cost of dying that goes with it. Estimating some 76 million boomers will face death in the next 15 years, this fascinating film covers it all — the good, the bad, the ugly. It offers not only the gross aspects (they are there in graphic closeups) but some surprising gallows humor (Roth can’t resist), and actually some hope out of the one thing everyone can expect in life: the end of it all.

For Roth, whose specialty is horror movies (Hostel, Thanksgiving, the upcoming Ice Cream Man), this is the real thing as he serves as narrator and on-camera host through the whole journey deep into the business of death. Chandler skillfully avoids making this all too grim and unwatchable, but doesn’t stint on the details, particularly in the opening section in which we get a visit with undertakers and embalmers as they show, without apology, just what goes into dealing with a dead body in preparation for burials of all types. It is bone-chilling stuff. The film also gets heavily into the cremation business, eye-opening to say the least, as they admit that in shoveling up the ashes and packaging their return to grieving loved ones, it is impossible not to likely include leftovers from previous cremations.

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Likely stoking dedicated environmentalist DiCaprio’s interest here (he and Roth previously collaborated on the 2021 Shark docu, Fin) is the cost to our world and the pollution of the skies coming out of these crematoriums, along with the probable impact when 76 million more bodies are up for grabs imminently in a business that can’t even handle the load they have now. Disposing of the Baby Boomers, a group who fought against government inaction and actions, is now a crisis for the generations that followed.

The hopeful part of this docu comes from its revelations about other methods, more environmentally friendly and actually consoling for those left behind. Water cremation aka alkaline hydrolysis in a far more gentle way of sending someone off into the beyond. Farms where bodies are allowed to decompose naturally above ground are a thing, if you want it. Most interesting are human composting facilities, where a body can be put into a very large box (resembles a huge freezer) and families come by filling it with everything from flowers to your favorite pizza, etc., before Step 2 turns you into dirt for eventual planting back into the earth and trees and gardens and other signs of nature we love.

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There is much, much more to absorb in watching this fine film that in the end is quite comforting for this Baby Boomer — proof that it is possible to keep giving back to the planet after you’re physically no longer part of it, if you want to. Rather than being a burden, you can still be part of the solution.

Producers are Roth, DiCaprio, Chandler, Jennifer Davisson, Phillip Watson, Sean McKittrick and Raymong Mansfield.

Title: Death Boom
Festival: Tribeca
Director: Jessica Chandler
Cast: Eli Roth, Jessica Chandler
Running time: 1 hr, 22 mins
Sales agent: WME

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