Deathgasm

Deathgasm is a movie with sincerity.  In a day when movies thrive on subversion and deconstruction, this is a horror movie about teenagers and heavy metal.  It’s a movie that looks at the emotions of a young person without mocking them, or considering them petty.  Our main character, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), is a child from a broken home living with his conservative Uncle (Colin Moy), and bully cousin David (Nick Hoskins-Smith).

However, whenever Brodie listens to metal music he flashes into a power fantasy, matching the artwork he constantly draws.  While these fantasies are, obviously, contrasted with Brodie’s real life, his real life is never used to diminish his fantasies.  They’re a real, positive part of his life that brings him joy amid pain.  That’s treated as a truly significant part of his life.

Brodie makes a total of three friends in his new life.  The first two are Dion and Giles (Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell), two nerds who love D&D.  While we don’t get the same vicarious power trip from the game that we do from Brodie, I’d say this is largely because we only see the game from Brodie’s less-than-interested perspective.  His remaining friend, Zakk (James Blake), is another metalhead a few years older than Brodie, who talks the trio into forming a metal band with him under the name Deathgasm.

Zakk convinces Brodie to seek out the home of a metal legend named Rikki Daggers (Stephen Ure), who he claims lives nearby.  The two find Daggers, and escape with what they think is a record of importance to him, just as Daggers is killed by a mysterious, well-dressed man (I haven’t been able to figure out from the credits).  Instead of a lost record of Daggers, it’s a Rick Astley album (ha ha), with some strange documents in Latin.  Brodie is able to translate them to discover it’s “The Black Hymn,” a medieval prayer to summon demons.

A romance begins to blossom between Brodie and Medina (Kimberley Crossman), who isn’t especially interested in metal music, but finds Brodie to be a sweet and fascinating person.  However, when David threatens Brodie for associating with her, Brodie decides he’s finally had enough, and writes the Black Hymn into a song for the band, leading to much of the town being possessed by demons.

Naturally, this leads to a lot of gory action, as Brodie and Zakk rip through the zombified townspeople (and also his non-possessed cousin, because why not?), while trying to find a way to reverse the possession.  Meanwhile, some human villains do some things.  Honestly, the human villains seem like something of an afterthought.  Above I was unable to even give the actor who played the first of them...he’s then killed by his boss who takes over for a fleeting time, before being killed by his mistress.  However, they’re cheesy, they’re silly, and they do their job until they die.

The final confrontation sees Zakk merging with the demon (he possesses the most evil person present, and that happens to be Zakk).  After a battle, Zakk is returned to human form via metal music, and killed, along with Dion and Giles.  Brodie and Medina become a couple, and live together enjoying metal.  The final scene shows that Zakk’s soul survived, still merged to the demon.

This movie is pure power fantasy.  A lonely, bored teenager gets to be a hero using his favorite thing: metal music.  But, it’s a very positive fantasy.  It’s the story of a teenager who makes a selfish decision to summon dark forces, and then defeats them by becoming a better person.  If there’s a better fantasy that exists than overcoming your own selfish desires I have yet to see it.

Medina’s a classic trophy girl, but far from the worst example.  The movie gives her enough focus for us to see why she likes Brodie, and lets us see how she comes to experience metal music and share his love of it.  We get the motions of her being mad at him, then forgiving him, but it’s a fantasy and it is what it is.

...oh, and it’s a bloody, fun mess of a good time.  Yeah, there’s that too.  I’m sure I could preach forever about how the film portrays gender roles, undercuts ageism, and blah, blah, blah.  But, this is a movie that has a metalhead teenager murdering his demonic aunt and uncle with sex toys and a chainsaw.  This is what gorehounds live for.  You need to see it if you haven’t.