“Deathgasm” Is Gleefully Over-the-Top

It’s best to think of Jason Lei Howden’s Deathgasm as the spiritual kin of Brendon Small’s great Adult Swim series Metalocalypse. They’re both gleefully over-the-top odes to all things metal—from the music to its ethos and iconography. Metalocalypse ran from 2006 to 2012 before capping off with a one-hour rock opera in 2013 and focused on the graphically violent and willfully stupid antics of the fictitious, incalculably popular death metal band Dethklok. Deathgasm’s metalhead protagonist Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), on the other hand, represents the opposite side of the heavy metal coin: He’s just a music-loving teenage outsider trying to make it through the demon apocalypse he’s unwittingly unleashed upon New Zealand. Oops.

Brodie’s story lacks the scale and scope of Dethklok’s. He is neither rich nor famous and he exists in a world that’s closer to reality, where metal and the people who love it aren’t mainstream. But Deathgasm is more concerned with its abundance of emotions and figurative heart. Director Howden has a clear soft spot for metal, and he’s even fonder of metal fans. He’s essentially dedicated an entire film to the cathartic experience of blasting metal into your ears. There’s also actual heart on display here, too, because no movie about metal can reasonably get by without featuring gushing viscera. In the department of “hey, that’s disgusting,” Deathgasm excels in exhilarating fashion—if, of course, dismemberment by chainsaw suits your definition of “exhilarating.”

But if you’re heading into Deathgasm on purpose, then bad-taste horror is almost certainly your jam, so the film’s creative, rampant gore more than quenches a thirst for kitsch. But Deathgasm is about human misery first and inhuman violence second. The title reflects the name of Brodie’s band, which he forms with his high school pals: Nerds Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell), and a tough, do-what-I-want loner Zakk (James Blake). Metal is their shared respite from life on the bottom of the totem pole. Unfortunately for the citizens of their sleepy town, it’s also a conduit for hell on earth when a piece of unhallowed sheet music winds up in their grasp and they play it against their better judgment. Clearly, they’ve never watched any of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies.

Howden clearly has done his cinematic homework and Deathgasm owes a reasonable debt to the works of Raimi and far greater credit to the horror romps of fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson. (Perhaps not coincidentally at all, Howden has VFX credits on Jackson’s recently completed Hobbit trilogy.) Just like the heroes of Jackson and Raimi’s oeuvres, Brodie and his chums reach for the nearest gardening implements when trouble rears its ugly head. Unlike Lionel Cosgrove and Ash Williams, though, they must also contend with the rigors of adolescent drama. Brodie and Zakk like the same girl, Brodie’s classmate Medina (Kimberley Crossman), though the film treats her like a person with agency instead of a blowup doll to be fought over. She’s an empowered badass. Brodie might know a few mean riffs on his guitar, but Medina knows how to swing an ax.

Deathgasm might be one of the best midnight movies of 2015. It’s certainly one of the best audience flicks among the year’s plethora of genre releases, from It Follows to We are Still Here; the film absolutely cries out to be seen with a theater full of rowdy gorehounds. But if Howden should be good at anything, it’s staging and shooting splatter sequences. You don’t work with a guy like Jackson without having some of his crass charm rub off on you, after all. What makes Deathgasm special is that Howden actually gives a damn about his main characters. He isn’t particularly interested in making an abattoir for them to horribly die in—although he has no idea what to do with his sadly underused supporting cast. The film lays out the groundwork for us to care. Brodie, Zakk, and Medina palpably struggle with feelings of alienation; anybody who has endured the endless popularity contest of high school can vibe with that sensation. Deathgasm isn’t just for lovers of metal and horror enthusiasts—it’s a movie made for any misunderstood loners.

And yes, it’s also a movie where kids fight demons using mislaid sex toys. Deathgasm’s sobering elements don’t make it a sober picture; Howden just happens to be smart enough to know that blood-soaked reveries demand characters their viewers can root for. The film’s seams show, at times, and you may get the frequent impression that Howden had about 15 minutes or so of additional footage he wanted to shoot but ultimately couldn’t. If that’s the truth, that’s a shame, but he’s infused Deathgasm with so much youthful, anarchic vim that it doesn’t really matter. Halloween is just around the corner. If you need a capstone for your annual horrorthon, look no further than Deathgasm. Just make sure to catch it with the right crowd.