Deathgasm (2015)

If you're one of my close personal friends, then you would know that the first music genre that I came to love was heavy metal. It all started when I was 11 years old and I heard a Metallica song off this live album they did with an orchestra. I bought that live album and fell in love with them. After that, I bought all of their records, yes including Load and Re-Load (this was before St. Anger came out). I fell in love with their earlier albums, much like everyone that was a fan of them at that point. My exposure to Metallica opened me up to this genre that I knew very little about. The more I listened to it, in my teen years, the more I fell in love with it. Metallica is certainly the most influential band in my life to my current tastes as a 28-year-old adult. They're not my favorite band, not even close, but they opened me up to this world. And it's a world that I've sort of fallen out of grace with. Not cause of any one particular reason, I just found that it's a bit dull to listen to the same type of music over and over, so I feel I'm more open now to various musical genres . Now I like a little bit of everything, but my heart still belongs to metal. So, realistically speaking, it was obvious that when I had access to Deathgasm, I was gonna watch it immediately. Plus, I always love movies that embrace the more sillier aspects of their concept. Realistically speaking, you can't do this type of film without going all out. Going halfway would just be cowardly. But, if I'm being entirely honest, the film doesn't really get going until the band, the eponymous Deathgasm, play this song that, literally, brings about hell on earth. I don't know, I just felt the film was a little dull leading up to this. It has all the usual stuff of Brodie being bullied because people think he's a satanist due to the music he likes and how he dresses. Which is like assuming that anyone who likes country is a homophobic, racist piece of shit. He has moved in with his uncle, aunt and cousin as his mom tried to suck off a Santa Claus in a crowded mall. He becomes friends with this older kid that got expelled out of school and they start a band. Shit keeps happening, not gonna go into detail, that leads them to getting this black hymn that they then turn into a song. This songs brings hell and this is where we left off. I don't know, I just felt like the first half of the movie kinda dragged and it got to the point where I was just waiting for the shit to hit the fan. When it does, however, it does not let up and the film turns into quite a fun ride of blood, gore and heavy metal. I'm not gonna say it's a really fun movie, it's not quite at that level, I just felt it wasn't consistent enough, but I do feel that horror fans will like a lot of what this movie has to offer. Metal fans will eat this up for sure. The movie is well-written, it's not super hilarious, but it does have some good lines and there's an actual character 'arc', per se, for the Brodie character. He's not the same guy at the beginning of the film that he is at the end. It's not great or anything, but there's at least ome character development. The acting is solid as well, so no complaints there. The one thing is that, now that everything has happened and hell has come on earth, there is room here for a sequel, that's actually already in development. I feel like they can go some really interesting and goofy places, I imagine a situation where Brodie and his girlfriend have to go to hell for one reason or another. The potential is there and I expect a sequel to be better than the original, just cause everything has been established and you don't really need to set everything up as much. Sort of like how Dead Snow 2 was a considerable improvement over the first film. With that said, this movie isn't without its flaws, but once it got going, I came to enjoy this movie quite a bit. It's not perfect or anything, but it is a fun genre film, so I'd recommend it.

A spiritual cousin to 1986's Trick or Treat, Deathgasm is a blazingly fast-paced, occasionally side-splitting B-movie that targets headbangers and heavy-metal enthusiasts. Hailing from New Zealand, this import is in the league of other Kiwi gorehound extravaganzas as Peter Jackson's Dead Alive and Bad Taste. Perhaps director Jason Lei Howden should be prescribed Ritalin because he dashes through character introductions and story beats at a whiplash pace. The chainsaw comeuppance of a non-possessed bully is hilariously rationalized ("I think I heard him say something about Satan"). Howden steers the film towards some uproarious sight gags such as a simulated re-decapitation in the villain's lair (which is ironically an eggshell-white chateau instead of a dank and olive-black dungeon) over a tarp. Maybe I'm desensitized to the 80's nostalgia of entrails-strewn antics because of the overkill in Turbo Kid, but it could be argued that the carnage around a dice-shooting paintball gun, tapering dildos and a belt-sander is rather excessive. Medina's (Kimberley Crossman) transformation from smutty object-of-affection to a Ash-esque antihero with "ax" puns is too jokey. At such a blistering speed, the audience is still heartened to Brodie's (Milo Cawthorne) outcast plight where his garage band is the only expressive outlet for his rage against conformity and his Christian uncle and aunt. The finale culminates with a Tommy Wirkola rollercoaster of demon-slaying enjoyableness but it never crests on such a massive scale.