Director: Jason Lei Howden
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 86 Minutes
With so many horror-comedies coming out this year, it’s hard not to feel a sort of malaise when it comes to the “silly spookies” (as I now and will forever call them). Luckily, Jason Lei Howden’s feature debut, Deathgasm, is one of the good ones that, although mostly silly, doesn’t skimp on the spooky.
The film is your classic story about a group of hapless youngsters unwittingly unleashing a plague of demons upon the earth. Sure, it’s something we’ve seen before, but the setup of Deathgasm isn’t what makes it so damn fun – it’s the execution.
The aforementioned group of youngsters happen to be metalheads in a small New Zealand suburb, outcasts in their community who can’t seem to fit into the norms that society demands of them. Like many grumpy teens of this ilk, they form a band and call themselves DEATHGASM (because lowercase is for pussies). After discovering some strange sheet music hidden within a Rick Astley record that they found in an aging rocker’s home, they play the music and invoke an ancient demon who sets out to wreak havoc and consume the souls of the townsfolk.
The best way to describe Deathgasm would be to imagine a heavy metal version of Evil Dead II blended with Dead Alive. The film is ridiculous, yet fully self aware of just how ridiculous it is, and mixes slapstick comedy (and a healthy amount of one-liners) with completely over-the-top gore that will make you laugh in complete disgust. Like the glam metal of the ’80s, Deathgasm is all about excess, and in that regard it succeeds.
The effects work is almost entirely done practically and looks incredibly impressive considering the level of complexity some of the kills exhibit. In one scene, one of the possessed individuals gets beaten with a series of dildos before having a vibrator shoved through her cranium, while it’s turned on of course. There’s also a fair amount of limbs being lopped off by not one, but two, chainsaws – always a welcome addition to any horror movie. Dual-wielding chainsaws? Come on, how can you not love that?
The camerawork is frenetic, much like Sam Raimi’s style in the Evil Dead series, employing lots of quick zooms and fast pans, with a couple gearing-up scenes just to pump up the audience even more. There are even a few cutaways and fantasy sequences, which I mostly could have done without, save one sequence in which the female lead (Kimberley Crossman) discovers metal for the first time.
As fun as this movie is, there are still some nitpicks to be had with it, like the fact that the main character of Brodie, played by Milo Cawthorne, looks like he should be planning for retirement and not trying to graduate high school. There are also a group of demon worshippers in the film who happen to be trying to find the music pages and fulfill some prophecy, but they felt underdeveloped and probably could have been removed from the movie completely. These are only minor quibbles and did little to detract from the overall enjoyment of the film.
If you’re into heavy metal, watch Deathgasm; you’ll have a blast. If you’re into horror, watch Deathgasm; you’ll have a blast. Even if you’re not into either of those things, give it a watch anyway because you’ll probably still have a good time.
