Deathgasm

Director - Jason Lei Howden (The Light Harvest)
Starring - Milo Cawthorne (Ash vs. Evil Dead), James Blake (Hot Rob), and Kimberley Crossman (The Almighty Johnsons)
Release Date - 2015
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - "Total brutal"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     2016 has not been the best year for me in terms of the movies I've watched.  As most of you know I had took January off from horror to watch some non-genre films that were sent to me to review.  Most of them were horrible while a few were worth watching.  I then hit February with a bang and started watching any horror film that was sent to me to review.  Most of them were huge letdowns that offered little to no entertainment.  A few stuck out but most was shit.  I decided to break that streak with a film I knew would not suck.  That film was the horror comedy of metal proportions from New Zealand known as Deathgasm.  I was lucky enough to find a copy outside of Wal-Mart that changed the titled to the less thrilling Heavy Metal Apocalypse.  

     The film follows metalhead Brodie (Cawthrone) who moves in with his religious uncle and asshole cousin while his mom is locked up for being crazy.  He loathes his family and the school he attends but soon finds another metalhead named Zakk (Blake) and the two go around raising hell.  One day Zakk takes Brodie to an old house where they plan on robbing it where they learn that the home belongs to former metal front man Rikki Daggers.  Daggers has been in hiding for sometime but the two finding him has lead a man in black to his home.  Daggers hands the two young rockers some old parchment to hide and sneak them out the window where they soon find that it is actually old sheet music.  The man in black kills Rikki and returns to his boss who is looking for the parchment to raise a demon and have him inhabit his body.  They set out to search the town while Zakk and Brodie form a band, Deathgasm, and play the music on the parchment turning everyone in town into demons.  Now his band and the girl of his dreams must fight for their lives and stop the coming of the apocalypse.  

     Deathgasm is one of those horror flicks that everyone was talking about before it was released.  Most of the time these type of films end up being mediocre Wal-Mart horror flicks that offer up nothing while promising everything.  I knew Deathgasm was not like these other films and I was in the right for once.    The acting in this one is fantastic.  The entire cast brought about a film full of memorable characters.  Cawthorne offered up a solid attempt at the teenage outsider obsessed with metal.  Though he looks much older than the age he is portraying he still did an outstanding job.  Blake did great as the hardcore metal head who is known to cause anarchy around the community and ends up being the film's tough guy.  There was several times in the film where he brought the hate out in me which was the intent.  The remainder of the cast is great but these two are the film's main stars and for good reason.  The story for this one is one we have seen so many times before but never in a film centered around metal like this one.  There has been so many films where a group of teenagers/twenty somethings/ so on that has accidentally unleashed a demon/demons and had to fight their way through them in order to survive and prevent the end of the world.  This is almost the same plot as the 1988 classic Night of the Demons where a group of teens accidentally unleash demons in a haunted mortuary.  The metal element really makes the viewer forget that this is the same story we have already seen several times before.  I loved that angle and can not wait until the sequel hits store shelves.  Finally, the film has several on screen kills that were bloody and impressive.  The kills are fast paced kills full of blood and gore.  They were truly entertaining and offered up some great practical effects.  Most of the effects were practical and looked amazing.  The kills looked great along with the demons.  The film also housed some impressive visual effects that did not weaken the film that is typical of the films from The Asylum and SyFy originals.  Overall, Deathgasm is one hell of a horror comedy that will be hard to beat this year.  They gave the other films set to be released this year a favor by coming out so early in 2016.  Now they can re-evaluate themselves before they release.  This film is funny and brutal as fuck.  Check this one out as soon as you can and do not wait.