Light-touch genre maybe isn’t as celebrated as it should be – human dramas that gently fold in elements of the sublime and surreal to make a louder and more exciting impact. They’re often not quite sexy or crowd-pleasing enough for horror fans, and a bit too aggressive for everyone else. Rarely does anyone manage to walk the ever-thinning tightrope between the two worlds, so to say that director Elric Kane’s engrossing relationship chiller The Dead Thing does is to not just call it impressive, but a full-on marvel.
An achingly millennial ghost story, set amongst the constant conveyor belt of swipe-right dating apps, Kane’s indie is a truly accomplished look at the hunt for human connection in an impersonal world. 20-something artist Alex (a likably messy Blu Hunt) barely exists, working nights in a menial job while slinking from casual hookup to casual hookup. It’s only when she matches with doe-eyed Kyle (stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen in a hopefully career-cracking role) that she finally starts to open up and share herself with anyone; the first person in a seemingly endless string who actually seems to listen, and ask questions.
Naturally, there has to be a twist. Nobody this attractive, this attentive and this keen for genuine human intimacy, could be real, right? What’s Kyle hiding? Why isn’t he answering his texts? And how come he never shows up at the café he claims to work at? The more she probes, the more of herself Alex lets loose, losing control of her carefully dampened personality and forcing open a real Pandora’s box of a mystery that traps her mundane little life in a supernatural spiral from which there is seemingly no escape.
For someone so eager to be invisible, both to the world and to herself, Kyle’s very existence is a wake-up call for Alex, and watching Hunt slowly and delicately pick away at the rusty staples keeping her character in the dark is incredibly satisfying. It’s a brave, quirky, but carefully nuanced performance that stops well short of eccentric, conveying some very odd and specific moments with not just detail but personality, fully devoted to keeping things grounded, even when Kane and co-writer Webb Wilcoxen’s script takes a harder turn into horror territory in its third act.
Because as with any film hoping to crack the relationship journeys of young women in 2024, The Dead Thing ultimately feels compelled towards violence. It’s a sad inevitably, although one framed with just enough of a genre buffer to never register as heavy-handed, even if it is a little trite. Considering how tactfully its first half plays out, the film’s second is much more of a direct exercise in genre and the depth of the storytelling suffers as a result. To some, it’ll be a relief – a long-awaited climax to a gentle build – while to others it’ll (maybe more accurately) feel out of sorts and almost mean-spirited.
That’s not to take too much away from what Kane and his team have achieved here though; what is still a deeply thoughtful and cleverly strung look at contemporary human connection. A genuine one-of-a-kind indie that uses its horror both deftly and sparingly, and leads with an incredibly exciting central performance from an electric new talent in Blu Hunt.
The Dead Thing was screened as part of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024.
