Fantasia 2025 Review: EVERY HEAVY THING, A DePalma-Flavored Cyber Thriller And Mickey Reece's Best Film Yet
Oklahoma auteur Mickey Reece is back at Fantasia 2025 with his latest work of outsider art, in the neon-tinged ‘80s-infused cyber thriller, Every Heavy Thing.
Joe (Josh Fadem) lives a pretty milquetoast life in Hightown City , USA. Peddling ads in the local alt weekly mag by day, waiting at home for his longtime girlfriend Lux (Tipper Newton) to finish her nurse shift at the hospital by night. When co-worker Paul (Chris Freihofer) asks if he wants to come out and see sultry chanteuse Whitney Bluewill (Barbara Crampton) at the jazz club, Joe has no excuse not to go. After putting on a great show, Joe bumps into Whitney outside having a smoke. He pays her a compliment, a shot rings out, and his life is upside down.
There has been a string of disappearances in Hightown City, five women have gone missing without a trace. No clues, no bodies. But something Joe saw that night puts him in the villain’s crosshairs, and no matter who hard he tries to put it out of his mind, it’s like there are images burned into his skull trying to dig their way out from the inside. Now, fighting off nightmares, grappling with a relationship on the rocks, and attempting to wrangle an overly ambitious new reporter at his crumbling workplace, Joe is quickly losing his mind. Or is it being taken from him? And what’s all this about Big Tech coming to Hightown City? It’s a puzzle that he’s afraid to solve, but he won’t really have a choice if he wants to make it out alive.
In a little over a decade, Mickey Reece has directed over two dozen features, many of which have never seen the light of day outside of his Oklahoma City base, save for a few die-hard fanatics. So, when his 2018 feature, Strike, Dear Mistress, and Cure His Heart hit the festival scene, it was a watershed moment that led to further recognition of his prodigious (and peculiar) set of talents. In the years since, he has been a fixture at genre fests with his unique films, ranging from family vampire drama to fictionalized accounts of famed musicians to pseudo nunsploitation, but his aesthetic has always been very particular in a way that you either get it or you don’t. With Every Heavy Thing, Reece takes a stab at more mainstream filmmaking, and is largely successful in the effort.
As Reece’s star has risen over the last seven years, so has his ability to attract bigger talent. With Every Heavy Thing he has Josh Fadem not only in the lead, but also on as a producer. Indie powerhouse and genre darling Barbara Crampton’s appearance in the film also definitely helps to raise the profile as she plays against type in a very angular role is unlike anything we’ve seen from the You’re Next star. James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer, American Splendor) appears as tech mogul William Shaffer, and plays a critical role in unraveling Joe’s mystery. Vera Drew, director and star of last year’s breakout indie hit, The People’s Joker, also makes an appearance as one of Joe’s high school friends. Every Heavy Thing seems like the world of American independent getting in line behind Mickey Reece to help push him and his work forward, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work.
Thoroughly infused with an ‘80s thriller look and feel, Every Heavy Thing feels like Reece’s love letter to the films he grew up with. A little bit DTV/late night cable standard and a little bit Hitchcock by way of Brian DePalma, the film often feels like a grown-up version of something like War Games or Virtuosity crossed with Blow Out with the Hitchcockian flourishes that permeated DePalma’s ‘70s and ‘80s work.
Every Heavy Thing is obsessed with technology, using effects and art design straight out of 1983 to tell the story of the modern world’s obsession with observing and being observed. It’s an attack on the surveillance state and the detrimental impact it has on everyday people and their views of what life in the real world should be. A main character finds himself obsessed with living the lives of others through tech aided voyeurism, Every Heavy Thing explores the reciprocal effects of that kind of madness.
If Reece’s goal here was to make a film that is more accessible than his earlier work without sacrificing what makes his art instantly recognizable, Every Heavy Thing is a resounding success. A thriller that can stand toe to toe with any independent film, but with a unique outré aural and visual sense, populated by performers who understand the assignment and never once deign to wink at the camera, for my money, Every Heavy Thing is Mickey Reece’s best film since he jumped into the genre film world.
