Documentary Review: 'Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever'

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever

Directed by Chris Smith

Written by Chris Smith

Starring Bryan Johnson

Release Date January 1st, 2025

Published January 3rd, 2025

Does the reality of death make life more meaningful? Does the notion of an ending to life make what you do while living matter more? I thought about these questions a lot while watching the new Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever. The documentary examines the story of former Tech CEO and multi-millionaire, Bryan Johnson. After spending years on the grind to build his company Braintree into a major player in online payment technology, Johnson sold the company and dedicated himself to trying to live forever.

Bryan Johnson exists at the intersection of legitimate breakthroughs in aging science and being a con-man or grifter who takes advantage of vulnerable, frightened people desperate for the secret to not getting old. As the documentary tracks Johnson’s journey from deeply depressed grindset-mindset tech-bro to a man who claims to no longer use his ‘mind’ and is thus a functioning automaton guinea pig, we really cannot tell which side of the grifter-scientific pioneer fence Johnson falls on.

Now, I must say, I find Bryan Johnson to be relatively earnest in his unique pursuit. He seems genuinely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of aging science and longevity. On the other hand, he’s used his personal science experiment to parlay himself into social media stardom, first as a lol-cow for YouTube commentary channels and then as the highly successful proprietor of his own YouTube channel where he hocks products from his own supplement company. He still remains dedicated to pressing the boundaries of aging science but, since he’s not actually a scientist, he’s also platforming other potential charlatans, grifters and con-artists.

Johnson also thinks the idea of becoming a cult leader is not an insult. Many have called out Johnson for wielding his influence over his viewers in a fashion very similar to cult leaders. His response has been to embrace that notion, though not in the strictest sense. Johnson has yet to open a compound where his followers live and worship him, but he is dipping his toes in the water, as you will see in the documentary, and, through his supplement company, he’s happily taking their money. Do his supplements work? Who knows, they aren’t regulated by the FDA something the documentary fails to point out.

If you know anything about Bryan Johnson, it’s probably the fact that one of his anti-aging ‘therapies’ is receiving injections of his son’s blood plasma. This gained worldwide attention in 2024 as Johnson became the internet’s punching bag for a time for this weirdo behavior. Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, reframes the blood bond between father and son as something bordering on wholesome. Talmage, Johnson’s college aged son, willingly and unquestioningly goes along for the blood transfusions. He’s also an early adopter of his father’s anti-aging regimen.

Talmage is also his dad’s best friend and talks earnestly about how his father’s embrace of this new philosophy brought them closer together following the tumultuous divorce from Talmage’s mother, who refused any participation in the documentary or, perhaps, was not sought to be part of it. Mom's face is blurred in the only footage we see of her with her children and ex-husband. The only mildly dissenting voices heard in Don’t Die are Bryan’s mother who was hurt by his decision to leave the Mormon church for his new life, and a few experts in longevity science who question Johnson’s motives.

One scientist, the head of an underfunded drug trial for an anti-aging medication claims he’s approached Johnson about funding his study of a drug that Johnson is already taking, somehow, and that Johnson refused. Johnson has seemingly avoided most American scientists in his pursuit of defeating death, likely because American scientists are subjected to regulations that European and South American researchers are able to skirt. Here again, the documentary doesn’t press too much on Johnson’s scientific efficacy or whether he’s working around government regulations, but it does follow him to a clinic on a shady South American island where he undergoes an experimental treatment.

The documentary offers no critique of this Banana Republic clinic or its science, possibly having traded hard to answer questions for access to the people running the clinic and shots of Johnson undergoing the treatment. I can’t say for sure that director Chris Smith made such compromises, I’m merely theorizing why he allows this unregulated, unproven, potentially fly by night operation an unchallenged platform to advertise their ‘treatment.’ A treatment, by the way, that is unregulated, unproven, and not subjected to outside scrutiny.

Millionaires and Billionaires, guys exactly like Bryan Johnson, have spent a great deal of money trying to convince us that regulation hinders innovation. But, what they don’t want you to realize is that regulations are why you’re able to buy a car that doesn’t blow up as you drive it off the lot. Regulation is why the drugs you take do what they are supposed to do. Without regulations, I could sell you a pill that claims to make you fifty percent more attractive and if that pill doesn’t work, you have no recourse against me other than an impotent complain that my pill doesn’t work which I can deflect by saying, ‘No, it just didn’t work for you.’

Oh wait, actually, I can do that. You see, that’s what Bryan Johnson and guys like him are already doing. I mentioned before, Johnson’s supplement company is not regulated by the FDA. Thus, he can go on YouTube and claim that his products reverse the aging process and if they don’t work, there is nothing you can do about it. Indeed, his products could cause irreparable harm to your health, and there is nothing you can do but complain about it.

People like Dr. Oz have been doing this for years in public, on TV and YouTube, selling you useless snake oil that is basically a placebo and with the FDA rendered toothless, there is little you can do to stop this. So, I wanted to know for sure if Johnson’s products were regulated by the FDA and in the simplest search possible, I could not get an answer to that question. Disturbingly, Google’s new A.I search assistant found no results and the only results available in a regular Google search are from Johnson’s own website. That’s super shady, especially when you consider that you can buy your way to the top of Google Search results and Johnson has clearly done that.

On his website, next to the many supplement products he’s selling, there is a claim that the products ‘tested by a third party’ however, that third party, Tustin, is also not an FDA regulated facility. If Johnson truly believes his products are safe to use and do the things that he claims they can do, why won’t he subject them to the same kinds of testing that any other similar product has gone through in order to receive the FDA seal of approval? That’s just super shady. It points to a distinct lack of integrity and throws every inch of every claim that Johnson makes into question.

And this brings me to why I can’t recommend Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, it’s more of an infomercial for Bryan Johnson than it is any kind of rigorous examination of his character, his methods or his claims. The ‘documentary’ takes a rather cowardly approach to letting you make up your own mind about Bryan Johnson and his potential grift. This isn’t my bias against Johnson speaking, I kind of like the guy. His bond with his son is weird but oddly genuine. Making himself a millionaire lab rat has had some positive effects on aging research. I won’t pretend that’s not impressive. But I am deeply troubled by his unwillingness to subject his personal research to the rigor of actual science. That, plus his growing presence as a guru who makes money off of turning himself into a human experiment, calls his integrity into question. A documentary that fails to take that lack of integrity seriously is a failed documentary.

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