Fantasia 2024 Review: THE DEAD THING, Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

It's tough out there for a single gal. Alex (Blu Hunt) is a woman caught in the throes of malaise, accompanied by a desperate wish to find something worth caring about. Her daily grind is uninspiring, her home life with her sister is fraught, and dating? An absolute nightmare.

She spends night after night swiping though Friktion (a hookup app) looking for her next fling. She swipes, they meet, they screw, they leave. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a stultifying pattern to which she seems resigned, that is until she stumbles across Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen). A lively, handsome guy who can actually carry a conversation and is interested in more than just a few furtive minutes of humping, Kyle seems like a dream. However, when he disappears after a night filled with physical, emotional, and intellectual passion, Alex will do anything she can to find him again.

So begins The Dead Thing, the first solo feature from writer/director Elric Kane. A stylish, ghostly, LA noir film that explores the modern dating scene and the challenges of the people trapped in its infuriating spiral. More a character study of a woman who finds everything in her life lacking once she gets a taste of true connection than a straight up horror film, The Dead Thing is a depressingly relatable story of the depths to which love can take us when we are teased with its warm embrace.

Alex’s journey through the dark underbelly of Los Angeles’s frequently toxic dating scene is full-on ‘50s noir. She bounces from one encounter to the next with little to no expectation of satisfaction – sexual or otherwise. Her bond with Kyle, fresh and tenuous though it may be, gives her hope that there is more to her life than an unending series of disappointing trysts. Until Kyle there has been no romance in her life – in fact, even her engaged-to-be-married sister’s relationship is falling apart in front of her, so she isn’t even able to experience that joy second hand. But with Kyle, it’s different, and soon she realizes just how different and fleeting it really is.

There’s something strange about Kyle, the idea that Alex having been ghosted isn’t just a clever millennial turn of phrase but an accurate description of his relationship to the world. Meanwhile, Alex returns to her day job confused, disoriented, and haunted by her romantic reputation. A co-worker makes a pass at her, noting that she can’t be that offended with all of the action she gets on her own. She rightfully resists, but she is weakened from having invested all of her energy into recapturing the magic of that one night with Kyle.

Kane emphasizes the monotony of Alex’s existence by bombarding the audience with moments that would be sexy in any other context, but that lose efficacy in their repetition. Alex’s sex life may be robust, but it’s also uninvolving; the sex she has away from Kyle is perfunctory at best, and she relies on fantasy to keep the spirit *wink* of that encounter alive. Kyle, on the other hand, continues to prowl the night for his perfect match, but when the two collide, disaster becomes inevitable.

The Dead Thing is a marvelously stylish feature, owing a lot to Kane’s understanding of artifice and presentation of these scenarios. It’s not a flashy film, but the gorgeous nighttime cinematography from Ioana Vasile elevates every scene and informs the vibe of the film in ways that dialogue cannot. Similarly, Michael Krassner’s evocative score plays a huge part in setting the tone, especially in a film where the lead character doesn’t even speak for nearly ten minutes, even though she’s on screen the whole time.

A scholar of film, and a professor of film production, Kane knows what he’s doing, and he uses everything he’s learned and taught to turn The Dead Thing into a debut feature worthy of discussion. Though the film could stand to be a bit short – we are a bit beaten over the head with reiteration of Alex’s loneliness long after her situation is very apparent – it’s still an engaging watch with more than enough flair to make itself instantly memorable and worthy of praise. Sexy, sad, spooky, and distinctly unnerving, The Dead Thing is definitely a film for horror fans who prefer their scares to come with long lead ups and plenty of creepy mystery.