Netflix Doc Don’t Die Captures the Ecstasy and Delusion of the Anti-Aging Vanguard
What is the function of physical health? As nebulous a concept as “health” inherently is–because one can always be at least a little “healthier”–what would you say is ultimately the end goal of achieving a top-notch physical state of being? Does one strive to be healthy in order to more fully enjoy or indulge in life’s myriad experiences? Or is the purpose of health simply to prolong life itself at any cost? Are scoring “perfect” biometric numbers their own reward, and how much is it reasonable to expect someone to do in service of making those numbers go up or down as recommended? Especially when the person in question is say, an average American and not a millionaire or billionaire with unlimited resources to devote to the goal? Because if there’s one thing that should be immediately clear to any viewer of new Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, it’s that nothing about the case of Bryan Johnson can be construed as conventional or applicable to the average person in almost any way. This is a man whose anti-aging obsession requires both an extraordinarily, frighteningly focused mindset, and the resources of the top .1% of mega-millionaires to turn into a reality. Bryan Johnson is a scenario entirely unto himself.
And that, perhaps unsurprisingly, makes him a fascinating subject for longtime documentarian veteran Chris Smith, the creator of cult-classic American Movie and various, subsequent documentary features and series that have ranged from HBO’s 100 Foot Wave to Netflix’s Fyre and Wham!. With Don’t Die, Smith has clearly humored Johnson’s obvious desire for self-aggrandizing publicity, allowing him to tell the story of his life as he sees it, as Smith simultaneously digs for the motives behind why this 47-year-old man has devoted unimaginable dollar figures to the quest for anti-aging effects that he dreams will give him the “body of an 18 year old.” The director’s personal opinion rarely enters the equation in this fairly neutral look at the controversial figure of Johnson, whose “Project Blueprint” turned into a viral internet story in the last few years, but one gets the sense regardless that Smith is transfixed by the admittedly impressive determination and willpower of the millionaire health obsessive, and simultaneously feels some pity for the way the man has built an artificial temple of “health” around himself, severing his more natural human connections and relationships in the process.
At the very least, there’s no denying that Don’t Die is a story of one man’s absolute, utter obsession with achieving a specific goal: In Johnson’s case, that is to slow the physical aging process as much as it possibly can be slowed, and reverse it anywhere this might theoretically be possible, to achieve the youngest “biological age” that can be achieved. How is this done? Well, it starts in the places one would no doubt expect: Diet, exercise, sleep, etc., before steadily ramping up in more and more absurd directions. Hours of intense gym workouts are somehow fueled by 2,000 vegan calories a day, as Johnson admits on camera that he’s constantly hungry, remarking that “the saddest part of my day is the last bite.” He casually pops 130 pills or more on a daily basis, takes trace levels of various minerals and metals measured in micrograms, and engages in something called “penis shockwave therapy,” a phrase that appears on screen for about half a second and is never (blessedly) mentioned again. What it looks like in practice is the broadest and most all-encompassing approach to health you’ve ever seen: It’s like the teams of doctors at Johnson’s employ are loading anything that anyone has ever postulated might be good for health into a shotgun shell and simply blasting him with it on a daily basis. How anyone could possibly keep track of the interactions of all these drugs and supplements, I have no idea. That point is mentioned but never explored in earnest.
Once one sees how much of Johnson’s waking hours revolves around these health tasks, an obvious question arises: Why does he consider the quest to be worthwhile, given the investment of time, money and other sacrifices? And to even attempt to answer that question, you have to accept the postulate that Smith seems to be advancing: Bryan Johnson’s drive to do this is as sincere as it is deranged. He’s not approaching Project Blueprint as an interest or a hobby; it’s more like a philosophy, personal code or religion. He has used it, in fact, as a way to remove conscious responsibility for himself from his life, what he calls a refutation of the “conscious mind.” The mind, he argues, tricks us into things that aren’t actually good for us. “Demoting” the mind places decision-making not in your own arena, but surrenders those decisions to the body itself.
What does that look like? Well, Johnson doesn’t decide what he wants to eat for his meals, for instance–he allows his heart, liver and lungs to “decide” those things based on what kinds of biometric readings he has and what nutrients they need. He’s effectively ceded all decision making in this way to his own physical shell, which is oddly freeing, in the sense that he presumably doesn’t feel any kind of decision paralysis. He gets to simply do what he’s told, which is a streamlined way to live.
It’s easy to argue that this sounds like a uniquely hollow existence, one that misses the very essence of what it is to be human. Living the way that Johnson does–waking up and doing health regimens all day until it’s once again time for sleep–would seemingly make one effectively a prisoner of their own body, or a slave to it. It begs existential introspection on why we even have these bodies in the first place: Is it the body’s job to facilitate the life you choose to lead, or is the purpose of your life to service the body? Is Johnson supremely hubristic for seemingly thinking that he is above the universal experience of all other human beings, believing that none of the universe’s randomness and incomprehensible complexity applies to him? Does he think it’s impossible that he’ll just have an aneurysm one day? Or in calling Johnson arrogant, is this not more or less exactly what luddites and anti-science critics have always said throughout history when someone is advocating for groundbreaking or unintuitive medical breakthroughs? Don’t Die interviews quite a few researchers and doctors pioneering anti-aging science, and they tend to agree that there’s merit (or at least valuable data) in much of what Johnson is doing, but at the same time these doctors can’t really comment on whether a person would have to be a little bit crazy in order to base their lives entirely around these activities. They see Johnson as more a guinea pig, less a human.
Smith’s documentary, meanwhile, does do some good work in steadily unearthing the human being underneath all the regimens, suggesting Johnson is a person who has dealt with serious loneliness and issues related to attachment, selfishness and relationships at various times of his life, but also potentially is one who has recently found a new lease on social living through both reconnection with his eldest son and the religion-like community that his health crusade has now created around him. A divorced father of (at least) three, Johnson’s past life as an entrepreneur who struck it rich in the world of web-based mobile payment technology makes a fascinating contrast with his now ascetic, technomonk-like existence. One wonders, in a chicken-or-egg manner, at how exactly his decade plus of marriage crumbled 10 years ago: Did his seemingly manic and mounting obsession with health and secular science cause him to leave his wife, children and Mormon Church upbringing behind, or did the collapse of his previous life shatter him so thoroughly that it then sent him down the path of reinvention that would eventually lead to Project Blueprint?
Regardless, you can’t help but wonder about most of the relationships that remain in Johnson’s orbit, and it’s impossible to miss that to some of these people the quixotic millionaire can’t help but represent a sort of golden goose. There’s his PR manager, for instance, who has helped him to create a burgeoning media, fitness and health food empire, and declares “I would hate for anything to happen to him,” as he prepares to embark on experimental, DNA-based gene therapy. To which we obviously reply: Yeah, I bet! It wouldn’t be ideal if something happened to the meal ticket, would it? A more emotionally fraught case, meanwhile, is Johnson’s 18-year-old son Talmage, who has come to live with his father in the final year of high school during filming of Don’t Die and is increasingly drawn into mimicking his health-obsessed lifestyle. Bryan’s obsession with Talmage, who he sees as something like a younger and more perfect biological vessel, can be a little unnerving to witness, as he simultaneously pours all his repressed family love he’s been harboring into the kid and leans on him for emotional and moral support, seemingly seeking affirmation that he’s made the right choices. My cynical side, meanwhile, can’t help but theorize that perhaps Talmage is even savvier than Bryan at the end of the day, and has calculated the very real life benefits that will be involved in choosing to live with his astoundingly wealthy father, the man who left his family when he was 8 years old. He certainly appears poised to pick up wherever Bryan might leave off.
Overt criticism of Bryan Johnson, meanwhile, is touched on throughout Don’t Die, although it sometimes feels like Smith is setting up those critics as fairly weak straw men ready to be toppled. A few YouTube critics are briefly excerpted, accusing Johnson of orchestrating the entire Project Blueprint plan as a scheme to “make a quick buck” by selling various anti-aging products, something he is absolutely doing. But even a surface-level skimming of the life Johnson has now been leading for years and years should be enough to determine that there’s absolutely nothing “quick” about any buck Johnson is making here. The guy has dedicated nearly every waking second of his life to this cause; making money off it is simply an extension of his natural instinct as a former businessman, not to mention a source of income to recoup some of the extreme costs of his health regimen. Simply put, a guy like Bryan Johnson could make far, far more money, much more easily, than by bathing himself in healing light and “penis shockwave therapy” for years. Regardless of whatever else you walk away thinking about the guy, you cannot end up doubting his belief in his project–it’s the only thing that sustains him.
At the end of the day, the relative success or failure of Johnson’s quest won’t be something we can ascertain for years or decades–only then will we know if the guy is subjecting himself primarily to medicine or snake oil on a daily basis. But Don’t Die offers an engrossing window into the mania of a unique individual, one with the outlandish resources to do something that no normal person would even be able to dream about attempting. Johnson has built a carefully constructed and maintained house of cards for himself, and this documentary preserves that attempt in time, with all its self-obsessed arrogance and earnest hopefulness intact. Will he someday deplete his funds, spent on ever-spiraling medical bills, and suddenly age 100 years instantaneously like the villain at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Perhaps, and I hope that if this happens, Chris Smith happens to be present at the time shooting some follow-up footage. It would be the epilogue this story deserves, but even without it, Don’t Die is a uniquely outlandish portrait of one odd man’s quest to topple the building blocks of life itself.
Director: Chris Smith
Release date: Jan. 1, 2025 (Netflix)
Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.