[31 Days of Halloween 2015: CRIMSON PEAK is now playing limited theatrical engagements and is
available for sale and rent on various digital platforms.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
*Note: As with last year’s 31 Days of Halloween marathon of
horror movie reviews, we’ll be diving deep into the new release section looking
for modern horror fare, hoping for the best, but frankly expecting the worst.*
The laughs, gross-outs, and killer riffs fly at a furious
pace in DEATHGASM, a headbanging
horror-comedy from New Zealand. We see the story unfold through the eyes of
teenage metalhead Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), who gets sent to live with his
fundamentalist Christian Aunt and Uncle and their jock son after his meth-head
mom is jailed for solicitation. The only bright spot is the killer record store
in town, where Brodie meets fellow rivet head Zakk (James Blake). Brodie also
makes a couple of friends at school, Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel
Cresswell), a pair of role playing game aficionados who aren’t exactly at the
top of the social hierarchy. Brodie also
takes notice of his cousin’s girlfriend Medina (Kimberly Crossman), but figures
he doesn’t stand a chance with her.
The four friends start a metal band of their own, christened
Deathgasm by Zakk, and proceed to make a racket in typical garage band fashion.
Then one day Zakk takes Brodie to a seemingly abandoned house where they find
one of their heavy metal heroes holed up and clutching a copy of an extremely
limited album. Realizing that the teens have given away his location to the
sinister forces looking for him, the aging rocker gives them the album and
tells them to scram just before the bad guys show up.
Turns out that there’s some sheet music in the album sleeve
that can summon a demon and grant the summoner incredible power, but Brodie and
his friends just figure that it might be a cool tune to play. Not so much. Once
they manage to play the whole thing, the gates of hell open wide and send forth
demons to possess several of the townspeople. Now it’s up to Brodie and his
friends to make things right, a task made considerably more difficult by the
fact that Zakk is kind of an asshole.
Heavy metal and horror have long been intertwined. Black
Sabbath, generally considered the first true heavy metal band, even took their
name from the Mario Bava shocker of the same name. And in the eighties, just about
every horror film had to have metal on the soundtrack. The few films to attempt
injecting metal prominently into their storylines, however, weren’t exactly
classics for the ages. Sure, THE GATE was
a decent flick, but for the most part we got schlock like BLACK ROSES, TRICK OR TREAT,
ROCK N ROLL NIGHTMARE, HARD ROCK ZOMBIES, and MONSTER DOG. Thankfully, DEATHGASM delivers the metal horror
film that fans have been waiting for.
It’s very much apparent that writer/director Jason Lei
Howden knows his metal. Brodey’s explanation of why metal is appealing is spot
on, and while the movie isn’t above having a few laughs at the corpse paint and
clothing modern metalheads sport, the characters are never portrayed as
cartoonish. The soundtrack is also an ass kicker with wall-to-wall underground
metal bands including Clevelanders Midnight and Nunslaughter.
Howden also clearly knows what metal heads want from a
horror film. There’s Satanic imagery galore, a fair amount of female nudity,
and not unlike fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson, Howden goes all the way when
it comes to the gore. The effects are almost all done using old school
practical methods, too. The only CGI I noticed were a few instances of extra
blood being added into an otherwise practical FX scene (somewhat surprising
given that Howden is part of the CGI team at WETA, the company that provided
effects for THE HOBBIT movies, among
others).
More importantly for general movie fans, the characters are
memorable, the writing is sharp (if a bit juvenile and sexist on occasion), and
the direction is fast paced and fun without being overly frenetic. Those who
don’t like gore and gross-out humor need not apply, but if that’s your thing,
this is the best horror comedy to come down the pike since DEAD/ALIVE. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We approve all legitimate comments. However, comments that include links to irrelevant commercial websites and/or websites dealing with illegal or inappropriate content will be marked as spam.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.