The Dead Thing
Directed by Elric Kane
Written by Elric Kane and Webb Wilcoxen
Starring Blu Hunt, Ben Smith-Petersen, John Karna
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour and 35 minutes
Streaming on Shudder February 14

by Rachel Shatto, Staff Writer

Sometimes being ghosted is a blessing in disguise.

Modern dating can be a true horror show, with endless scrolling through profiles, making snap judgments, and swiping left and right. The process is deeply dehumanizing, turning the steps of finding a romantic partner into something as impersonal as impulse online shopping. This horror, at least initially, is at the heart of The Dead Thing.

The film follows Alex (Blu Hunt), a beautiful single young woman who finds herself mired in the drudgery of her job and her romantic life—both have become mind-numbingly routine. Clock in, clock out, swipe left, swipe right. Same date, different guy. Different hookups, same dissatisfaction. That is until she matches with a man named Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen).

The two instantly share a powerful chemistry. Their conversations are deeper, darker, more personal, and more profound. The sex, when it comes, is passionate, and when it ends, the connection deepens as they spend the night together, having one of those truly rare experiences of instant intimacy. Because of all these positive signs, Alex is shocked that Kyle simply ghosts her. Rather than accept it, Alex tracks him down, only to discover he’s died, which makes no sense when she spots him again on a date with another woman. But rekindling the romance with her would-be ghoster—perhaps metaphorical, perhaps literal—takes a turn into passion, then codependency, disassociation, and, because this is a horror movie, violence.

The Dead Thing is refreshingly sex-positive. As the film is entirely disinterested in judging or punishing Alex for her active sex life and casual hookups, the issue is not that she’s broken with social mores so much as these tenuous and temporary dalliances have lost their luster for her, and their gray banality serves as a juxtaposition to the brightness and novelty of the real chemistry she has with Kyle. The film uses its many sex scenes to great effect—driving its early themes home through a montage of casual flings through a Groundhog Day like repetition of conversations, each culminating with Alex going home with her date, each time appearing more disillusioned and more dissociated at its climax. Director Elric Kane later returns to this technique, once again charting Alex’s progression from euphoric coupling with Kyle to that of something more sinister as the sex scenes become increasingly metaphysical, the two of them sometimes passing into one another.

These blending and disappearing bodies make for dreamlike and mysterious set pieces but also use visual language to explore ideas of codependence, enmeshment, and loss of self. Sometimes, Kyle disappears from the frame entirely, mirroring an earlier scene that sees Alex masturbating to his memory. Kane uses these scenes to blur the lines of what is real, what is projection, what is corporeal, and what is spectral. It’s in these moments that The Dead Thing really shines. The film also drips with atmosphere and style: it feels as if thought exists outside of time and space.  There’s rarely any sign of the sun as Alex’s personal and professional life all occurs after dark. Alex’s existence feels like one endless night, lending it a sense of the uncanny. The film seems to exist in a liminal space of quiet intimacy and possibility reminiscent of that fragile last hour of darkness before sunrise that feels like the night will both never end and come to a close too quickly. When daylight does rarely appear in the film, it’s sunrise or sunset—full sunlight is something lost to Alex, whose existence revolves around her nightlife.

Where the film is less successful is in Alex’s arc, which never quite sees her finding any real growth—or seemingly any real life outside of her romantic one. That’s no fault of Hunt, who imbues Alex with plenty of pathos and a kind of melancholy appeal. The final beats of the film, while circling back to the early ideas of patterns and repetition, make a kind of sense but are, well, quite grim. What it ultimately has to say about breaking free of patterns of abuse and toxic relationships becomes muddy and less satisfying as the film progresses.

However, like many relationships that don’t go the distance, The Dead Thing has plenty of moments along the way that make the bittersweet end worth going on the journey.

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