Christopher Webster [Celluloid 09.25.15] horror comedy



[Editor's Note: We also reviewed the Deathgasm positively out of Fantasia 2015]

If you're looking for a heavy metal love story full of rampaging demons, humour and the fun and vitality of early Sam Riami, Peter Jackson or Edgar Wright, look no further than Deathgasm, the hilarious and bloody first feature from writer/director and FX artist Jason Lei Howden.

Hailing from New Zealand, Howden cut his teeth working behind the scenes on films such as The Hobbit, The Avengers and The Great Gatsby and it seems as though he's picked up all the right things. Deathgasm may be lower budget than those mega-hits, but Howden infuses his film with so much motion and so many visual tricks that it rolls along at a brisk page.

You don't need to be into heavy metal to enjoy Deathgasm, but a cursory knowledge of the genre's iconography will certainly be an asset. Viking goddesses and barbarian overlords, studded leather coats and gruesomely graphic album covers abound.

Ultimately, Deathgasm is a high school coming of age story about a teenaged boy who moves to the suburbs to live his aggressively Christian relatives. He falls in with a crowd of role playing "nerds" before meeting the town's biggest badass who, but sure starts a band with him, ultimately leads him to bringing on the end of the world.

The performances are all great considering the folks in the film are relatively young and inexperienced. Of course it helps that they've all got that very specific New Zealand brand of humour down.


Deathgasm opens in cinemas and on VOD on October 2nd from Dark Sky Films. Easy recommend for splatterpunks and metal heads alike!



Recommended Release: Evil Dead




Follow Christopher Webster on Twitter.

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