Deathgasm Los Angeles Premiere
In ‘Deathgasm,’ Listening to Heavy Metal Has Nasty Consequences
By ANITA GATES
Few things are scarier than born-again Christians turned into demons by heavy-metal music and attacked with their own giant sex toys. “Deathgasm,” written and directed by Jason Lei Howden, offers that scene about halfway through, when pretty much everybody in the Christians’ town is in the same shape because members of a newly formed teenage band didn’t notice that the ancient sheet music they found was decorated with satanic symbols.
Mr. Howden’s gorefest, set and filmed in New Zealand, has way too much projectile vomiting of blood for genteel tastes, a series of close-up beheadings and one too many scenes (i.e., one) of a slain human’s internal organs tumbling onto the floor.
But the film has its charms. It’s easy to empathize with the handsome young protagonist, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), the new metalhead in town, who is beaten up by bullies, yearns for the prettiest girl in school (Kimberley Crossman) and explains his taste in music with, “Life is better because somebody else knows the pain and the rage that you’re going through.”
Ms. Crossman is appealing, too, as Medina, who shows up with a big ax at the appropriate times and inexplicably knows how to use it. In between the rampant four-letter words and the occasional partial nudity are likable attempts at humor — some sweet, some saucy.
As the human villain’s girlfriend (Delaney Tabron) kills him by stabbing him in the mouth, she observes, “Now who doesn’t have a gag reflex?”