THE DEAD THING, Looking for love in all the wrong places

Life is tough for a single woman. Alex (Blu Hunt) is a woman caught in the throes of unhappiness, accompanied by a desperate desire to find something worth loving. Her daily life is dull, her family life with her sister is tense, and dating? A real nightmare.

She spends night after night scrolling through Friktion (a dating app) looking for her next fling. She swipes, they meet, they fuck, they go. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a mind-numbing pattern she seems resigned to, until she stumbles upon Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen). A lively, handsome guy who can actually carry on a conversation and is interested in more than just a few fleeting minutes of fucking, Kyle seems like a dream. However, when he disappears after a night filled with physical, emotional and intellectual passion, Alex will do whatever it takes to find him.

So begins The Dead Thingthe solo feature debut from writer/director Elric Kane. A stylish, ghostly Los Angeles noir that explores the modern dating scene and the challenges of those caught in its maddening spiral. More a character study of a woman who finds everything in her life lacking once she tastes true connection than a straight-up horror film, The Dead Thing is a sadly relatable story of the depths to which love can take us when we are teased by its warm embrace.

Alex’s journey through the toxic underbelly of Los Angeles’s dating scene is worthy of a 1950s noir novel. She lurches from one encounter to the next with no expectation of satisfaction, sexual or otherwise. Her connection with Kyle, however fresh and tenuous, gives her hope that there’s more to her life than an endless string of disappointing dates. Before Kyle, there had been no romance in her life—in fact, even her engaged sister’s relationship is falling apart before her eyes, so she’s not even able to feel that second-hand joy. But with Kyle, it’s different, and she quickly realizes just how different and fleeting it is.

There’s something strange about Kyle, the idea that Alex was ghosted is not just a clever millennial turn of phrase, but an accurate description of her relationship to the world. Meanwhile, Alex returns to her day job confused, disoriented, and haunted by her romantic reputation. A co-worker makes a pass at her, pointing out that she can’t be that offended with all the action she’s getting on her own. She rightly resists, but she’s weakened by having invested all her energy in recapturing the magic of that night with Kyle.

Kane underscores the monotony of Alex’s existence by bombarding the audience with moments that would be sexy in any other context but lose their effectiveness in their repetition. Alex’s sex life may be robust, but it’s also unengaging; the sex she has outside of Kyle is superficial at best, and she relies on fantasy to keep the *wink* spirit of that encounter alive. Kyle, on the other hand, continues to prowl all night in search of his soulmate, but when the two collide, disaster is inevitable.

The Dead Thing is a wonderfully stylized film, one that owes much to Kane’s understanding of artifice and the presentation of these scenarios. It’s not a flashy film, but Ioana Vasile’s gorgeous nighttime photography elevates each scene and sets the mood of the film in a way that dialogue can’t. Likewise, Michael Krassner’s evocative score plays a huge role in setting the tone, especially in a film where the main character doesn’t even speak for nearly ten minutes, even though she’s on screen the entire time.

A film scholar and professor of film production, Kane knows what he’s doing and uses everything he’s learned and taught to transform The Dead Thing in a feature-length debut worthy of discussion. While the film may be a bit short—we’re a bit slammed by the reiteration of Alex’s loneliness long after his situation is very apparent—it’s still a captivating film with more than enough flair to make itself instantly memorable and worthy of praise. Sexy, sad, scary, and clearly unnerving, The Dead Thing This is definitely a film for horror fans who prefer their scares to be accompanied by long set-up sequences and plenty of creepy mystery.