Fantasia 2024 Review: ‘The Dead Thing’ Delivers a Strong Premise with Poor Execution
In The Dead Thing, which had its world premiere at Fantasia Festival today, Alex (Blu Hunt, The New Mutants) is going through the motions. She works, dates, has meaningless sex, and sits in front of her light therapy lamp glued to her phone. Perhaps she is the titular dead thing, sleepwalking through her life. When Alex meets Kyle (stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen, Riley Keough’s husband), the pair have a real connection that jolts her back to life — but then he disappears without a trace, leaving Alex to descend into a deep obsession. After some time, they run into each other and reconnect, but Kyle has a ghastly supernatural secret that has grave consequences.
Directed by Elric Kane, in his first solo feature away from his filmmaking partner Alexander Greenhough, and co-written with Webb Wilcoxen, The Dead Thing sets out to examine modern dating. Kane said the film “is a dark exploration of modern love and the technology used to find it. Through one woman’s plunge into modern dating, we are able to tell both a scary ghost story, and an intimate love story, and examine the issues we face when tethered to our phones.” While this won’t be the case for everyone, the plot felt fairly confusing. I definitely lost track of what was happening at times, alongside the characters. Even though the “supernatural secret” is guessed early on, the intentions are not explained.
The Dead Thing seems to be a metaphor for the way we cling to people through parasocial relationships. Alex’s longing for Alex and her inability to move on after he’s “ghosted” her resurrects Kyle back into her life, drawing out an unhealthy relationship that becomes absurdly toxic — especially when he returns her obsession. It’s an intriguing topic to explore, a romance gone wrong where longing for someone after the fact turns them into a monster. Alex’s obsession with Kyle is so deep that she might as well have taken him to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Our desires for people aren’t always the reality. The film also highlights what dating looks like for women, which unfortunately includes everything from uncomfortable conversation and unwanted advances, to sexual harassment and sheer violence.
Alex and Kyle’s relationship is described as a “whirlwind of obsession, dependence, lust, and infatuation,” but it never felt that way, especially against the film’s painfully slow pace. It begins well, but a small handful of intense make-out sessions don’t give off the intensity that was promised. For a lot of the runtime, it feels like the characters barely interact. Overall, The Dead Thing is understated to a fault. It doesn’t really demonstrate why these people are so drawn to each other, which makes it underwhelming. Filmmaking wise, Kane gets in some creative shots while the cinematography is pretty and soft, but often visually bland.
Hunt is the star of the film, bringing a wonderfully nuanced and raw performance to a believable character who becomes riddled with anxiety. It’s fascinating to watch Alex interact with other characters, such as her friend Cara (Katherine Hughes) and her co-worker Chris (John Karna), as the dialogue is often realistic and engaging. Smith-Petersen, however, doesn’t possess the same charisma as his co-star, making it hard to see what Alex would see in him. His character is somewhat boring on-screen, a fault of the writing and direction rather than the actor, which makes it hard to see any believable chemistry or passion between the two leads. This allows the film to come apart at the seams, but luckily some of the horror elements around his character remain effective. You’ll either love it or hate it.
