Fantasia 2024: The Dead Thing Review

Directed by: Elric Kane
Written by: Elric Kane & Webb Wilcoxen

Starring:
Blu Hunt – Alex
Ben Smith-Petersen – Kyle
John Karna – Chris
Katherine Hughes – Cara
Joey Millin – Mark
Brennan Mejia – Paul
Aerial Washington – Sarah

Image Credit: Yellow Veil Pictures

Running Time: 95 minutes
Not Rated

Dating is one of the many aspects of life that have dramatically changed in the technological tumult of the 21st century. Dating apps, social media, and even just the general stresses of 2020s life have upended the way people go about making romantic connections, to the point that for many it’s a brand of horror all its own.

The Dead Thing taps into that societal unease to tell a unique horror story about human connection, technology and the perils of modern dating. Elric Kane’s solo feature directorial debut, which screened at Fantasia International Film Festival over the weekend, is a confident and mood-steeped supernatural tale that explores how we use technology to find that connection and how it can ultimately undermine those very goals.

Alex (Blu Hunt) is a young woman living in Los Angeles who is looking for love, but instead has found a constant flow of uninspiring romantic interludes through the dating app Friktion. The first several minutes of the film follows her as she moves through date after date on a constant loop: meet them on the app, listen to them prattle on in a bar, then head somewhere for sex.

It’s a cycle of habit, and one she clearly takes no joy in and is barely even participating in – we don’t even hear Alex speak for the first several minutes of the film. The rest of her life is equally perfunctory; she pretends she’s asleep to avoid talking with her roommate/best friend and spends more time listening to her headphones than talking with her co-worker or anyone else. And any time one of her previous hookups tries to reach out, she ghosts them.

The cycle gets disrupted when she connects with Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen) on Friktion. Kyle provides the connection others haven’t; they actually engage in conversation, return to her place and spend the night opening up to each other, emotionally as well as physically.

The two part the next morning with a moment of awkward but real romance, leaving Alex feeling great about having escaped her spiral of ennui. But when she tries to text him, Kyle proceeds to ghost her which sends her down an even more crushing road of obsession.

Alex attempts to locate Kyle and eventually sees him at a bar doing the exact same thing with another woman that he did with her. She digs deeper and learns a crushing secret about Kyle that even he doesn’t know. When they finally meet up again, that secret pushes them back together in ways that will be devastating for all involved.

While The Dead Thing is Kane’s first time directing a feature film on his own, his bona fides in the genre are well-established as co-host of the Colors of the Dark and Pure Cinema Podcasts with several producing credits and a host of directed shorts to his name. His knowledge of horror and thrillers is put to good use in this film, which he co-wrote with Webb Wilcoxen. There’s plenty buried under the surface of this story, which takes its time to establish Alex as a character before things start to get spooky.

It certainly helps that Hunt is delivering fine work as Alex. It would be very easy for an actor to give nothing in a role like this where her character is stuck in this soulless pattern, but Hunt is captivating as Alex. She captures the existential depression of being stuck in the loop she’s in. And then when the story opens up and things take a supernatural turn, she provides the door through which we can buy into how she feels about Kyle and why things play out the way they do. Her connection with Smith-Petersen also feels real, which goes a long way toward selling her decisions in the back half of the film.

Kane has a strong visual sense at play here, making the most out of nighttime Los Angeles. Much of the film takes place amid nighttime streets or indoors; only very rarely do we get to see the sunlight, and it makes for an appropriately atmospheric tone to the film. The sex scenes add plenty to the look and mood, going trippy in the later acts as the relationship starts to get ominous.

The final act is where the horror really starts to kick in and it’s solid, though not always as engaging as the buildup. The execution behind what’s playing out on the screen is quite good and the actors sell it; nothing about it is bad. It just feels a bit more conventional than where it was headed before that. But even when it gets slightly predictable, it remains engaging thanks to Hunt and Smith-Peterson, who make us want to believe that there’s life beyond getting ghosted.

The Fantasia International Film Festival takes place in Montreal from July 18th through August 4th.

8.0

The final score: review Very Good

The 411

Elric Kane's The Dead Thing is a moody and effective film that makes strong use of its supernatural love story to speak to the perils of modern dating and how technology has complicated it. Blu Hunt gives a committed performance in the lead role and matches up well with Ben Smith-Petersen, while Kane delivers a strong visual aesthetic and some surreally creepy moments as well. It may frustrate those who are looking for higher-octane thrills, but it's an engaging story that delivers on its promises.