Horror film is in a period of ascension. Between the early hallmarks like Ti West’s The House of the Devil to more recent films such as Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here and David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, it seems safe to say that the last six or so years of horror cinema have led to a thriving new selection of quality film.
What is to thank for this? Perhaps the culprit is the flourishing of a new and considerably more influential independent cinema with the advent of cheaper filmmaking and easier distribution. It seems as if it’s no longer important to go for mass appeal; the niche is good enough.
Deathgasm, written and directed by Jason Lei Howden, is the latest film to solidify this new movement of quality horror, and perhaps it’s successful because it feels fresh. In a world that had been plagued by generic Hollywood horror, the films that are being released now wear their limited appeal as a badge of honor.
Certainly, Deathgasm is not a film that will captivate a broad market, it’s far too gory and far too deep within a music subculture many people don’t know much about. Horror buffs will enjoy it, but those who get the most out of it will likely be metalheads, gorehounds, or both. It’s because it plays to a small audience that the film feels confident in its’ direction and makes no attempt to water itself down.
The film follows Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), a metalhead that ends up in a small New Zealand town due to his mother’s drug-fueled liaisons with a mall Santa. Living with his Christian uncle and his obnoxious cousin, Brodie’s life is filled with internalized anger, heavy metal, and reluctant Dungeons and Dragons until he meets Zakk (James Blake), a kindred spirit in a town of the uninitiated. Brodie, his friends Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell), and Zakk start a metal band, the titular DEATHGASM. When Brodie and Zakk find mysterious pages of sheet music, they decide to play them and unwittingly unleash hell on their small town.
Deathgasm is firmly in the tradition of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, with some Evil Dead thrown in for good measure. Like those two films, Deathgasm draws on comedy to undercut the gore, and it succeeds because it’s able to draw comedy from character, and not just from situation.
That isn’t to say the film is devoid of situational humor. Rather, it focuses more on the humor inherent in the characters’ personalities, making the comedic payoff more personal — and more fulfilling.
Surprisingly for a gore film, it’s the characters that really turn the experience up to ’11’. The journey is one we’ve taken before, but the people we’re with make it worthwhile.
Brodie feels like a very real and very fleshed-out character, and there’s a lot of genuine emotion in his struggle to find someone who understands him. His romantic love interest, Medina (Kimberley Crossman), feels similarly believable.
On the other hand, Dion and Giles simply don’t get enough screen time and seem more like plot necessities and window dressing. Zakk’s character is simply confusing, and although there’s a lot that works with him, the decisions he makes towards the end of the film seemingly come from nowhere and don’t really mesh with our understanding of his character.
For all his talk of brotherhood, his actions betray him — or do they? It’s not exactly clear.
It almost feels as if Howden knew more about his characters than he knew what to do with them. This sense of incompletion is doubly apparent in the film’s lore, which unravels in the third act and seems to ignore its own rules.
Part of the reason that fantastical films work is their adherence to an internal system that follows the logic they establish. In Deathgasm, the lore isn’t quite clear.
While it’s fair to forgive this irregularity given the generic territory we’re crossing, it saps the third act of a lot of its final boss potential. When defeating the monsters is constrained to an established mythology, to disregard it in favor of previously unmentioned fine print seems an easy way out.
However, on the whole, this is a solid film that’s made with a lot of heart for a specific audience. If you watch the trailer and think you’ll enjoy it, chances are you will. Howden knows his stuff, and it’s no surprise that his obsession with film was spurred by Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste.
Deathgasm drips with classic splatter film goodness. If you’re on board, then the little issues won’t detract from this darkly fun, unique little film.