‘The Dead Thing’ Review (Shudder)
Stars: Blu Hunt, Katherine Hughes, Ben Smith-Petersen, Josh Marble, Brennan Mejia, Joey Millin, Aerial Washington | Written by Elric Kane, Webb Wilcoxen | Directed by Elric Kane
The Dead Thing opens with an extended montage that gives us a look at Alex (Blu Hunt; The New Mutants, Another Life) and the dead-end routine that takes up her waking hours. Her job is a dead-end position that has something to do with layouts and printing and her social life is a stream of one-nighters arraigned via a hookup app named Friktion, a name that’s meant to evoke the feeling of skin on skin, but serves as an omen of the conflict it’s about to bring her way.
Throw in some UV light therapy and avoiding her roommate Kara (Katherine Hughes; The Resurrection of Charles Manson, My Dead Ex) and that’s her existence, I say existence, because it seems a bit of a stretch to call it living. For all intents and purposes, she could be the dead thing the title speaks of.
That changes when she connects with Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen; Trigger Warning, Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman) who’s not only good-looking but seems genuinely warm and caring, he gets through Alex’s defences and the two seem to make an actual connection. Until he ghosts her, not even reading let alone responding, to her texts. Unwilling to just let go of what she found, or thought she found, Alex becomes obsessed with tracking Kyle down, no matter what it takes. But there may be a very good reason why Kyle is avoiding her, one she may regret finding out.
Director Elric Kane (Inside Horror, Campbell Walker Is a Friend of Mine) and co-writer Webb Wilcoxen (The Frontier, A Time to Dance: The Life and Work of Norma Canner) have created a story t that takes modern dating, from the technological focus of it to the toxic relationships and view it through the lens of horror, or at least a different kind of horror than it projects in real life.
It starts out grounded in reality and then seems to take a turn into mystery or thriller territory when Alex sees Kyle out with another woman. Instead, things become progressively darker until it becomes obvious that something distinctly horrific is going on, is Kyle an unhinged killer, or is the answer even more sinister?
The Dead Thing draws on some excellent performances from its leads, Blu Hunt has the difficult task of making the distant and emotionally erratic Alex into someone we care about, similarly Ben Smith-Petersen has to portray the Kyle we see in the early scenes and the much different version that reappears later and without giving too much away too soon. This is complemented by a nice performance from John Karna (The Blazing World, Scream: The TV Series) as Alex’s co-worker.
It’s these performances along with the camerawork of Ioana Vasile (The 5th Passenger, There’s a Special Place in Hell For Fashion Bloggers) that let the film develop the air of dread that appears in the second half and builds up until the climax. And it’s that feeling of impending doom rather than constant scares that kept me hooked, even as the plot started to develop some issues with characters at times seeming to characters acting based on where the plot needed to go, rather than what was logical for them to do.
Despite that stumble, The Dead Thing is still an effectively unnerving film that turns the emotional and mental horrors of dating into something a lot more chilling. It’s a film that made me feel lucky to be happily married and not part of the dating scene.
*** ½ 3.5/5
The Dead Thing will arrive on Shudder, fittingly enough, on Valentine’s Day February 14th.
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