Dark Match (2024)

Some time in the late 80s. A wrestler going by the nom de plume of Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa) has grown unsatisfied with her lot as a heel in a low-rent part of a big wrestling federation. She still dreams of championships, but given her actual position, her gender, and her blackness, there’s really not much of a future there. So she sleeps with sweet has-been colleague Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg), and gets increasingly angry at her counter-face Kate the Great (Sara Canning) – blonde and corn-fed enough to have hopes for the big time.

Things take a turn when the troupe’s manager agrees to a private side gig in the backwoods for them. Their employers are surprisingly happy to see the wrestlers, given their actual status on the wrestling totem pole; they give good parties; and they are also a probably dangerous cult under a mysterious leader (Chris Jericho), who’ll make himself known a little later.

The little private competition will turn out to be somewhat more deadly than expected.

Dark Match by Wolf Cop director Lowell Dean is the first real movie surprise I’ve encountered this year. The Wolf Cop movies were fun enough for what they were, but this, an at once very silly but also much more serious piece of horror is miles beyond these earlier films.

It’s only a comedy to a minor degree, but the kind of Wrestling horror movie Santo would never have partaken in, with some lovingly created practical effects, a zippy, twisty but not annoying plot and a sense of drive, fun and purpose that reminded me of the low budget movie traditions of decades past as much as it did of my beloved lucha cinema.

Dark Match looks absolutely fantastic, thanks to Karim “Mandy” Hussain’s photography in all colours of the neon rainbow, full of clever little visual touches that add excitement and impact to what could be a somewhat rote affair in lesser hands. Same goes for the production design – there’s a loving touch to these aspects of the production that suggests filmmakers who care about their silly little wrestling horror movie, so much so it doesn’t actually feel all that silly anymore when you’re watching it.

Speaking of care, the other pleasant surprise in Dark Match is the quality of its characterization. The film shows an impressive amount of love and respect for these people on the lowest rung of their chosen profession, and never aims scorn or its jokes at their places in life. In a move not always common in gory low budget horror, the film clearly likes its characters, and manages to impress this, as well as a sense of compassion with them, on the viewer.

This opens doors the actors – again playing on a much higher level than the film strictly needed – are more than willing to walk through, and suddenly, this is a silly wrestling horror movie populated by characters one can’t help but like and root for.

It’s a lovely achievement all around, particularly since this also does very well with its action and horror elements. Dark Match feels like a film that is exactly what it wants to be, in tone, style and mood, and I find it absolutely impossible not to love it for this.

Three Films Make A Post: You can change the cards you're dealt.

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995): And with the third attempt, the magic disappears completely from the Die Hard movies. Willis’s John McClane is now pretty much like every other action hero thanks to the shunting away of his wife and the non-generic parts of his character. The moments of surprising veracity from the last films are gone, too, and the less said about the film’s attempt to make gestures of tackling racism via its buddy movie plot line with a Samuel L. Jackson who gives the only fun performance in the whole movie the better. The thing additionally suffers from a limp script that doesn’t seem to have much of a clue how to turn a series of action sequences into a movie.

Even worse, returning John McTiernan is at his worst here, directing action scenes that are basically competent but never fun, interesting, or exciting. I understand why everyone involved thought removing the constraints of locality of the first films to be a good idea, but replacing their tight, increasingly outrageous action sequences with Willis and Jackson racing all over New York solving stupid riddles while random stuff breaks isn’t an entertaining replacement. And don’t even get me started on Jeremy Irons’s performance that is exactly the wrong kind of cartoonish.

Another WolfCop (2017): I don’t think I exactly needed a sequel to WolfCop in my life, even if it is by returning director/writer Lowell Dean again. I especially did not need one where half the jokes are slight variations on ones from the first film. However, its (sometimes too) self-conscious charms, its goofy-gory humour and its general Canadian-ness might not quite add up to the outrageous gore and giggle-fest its (awesome) poster and its brilliant tagline (“Sequels are a disease. Meet the cure.”) promise but Another WolfCop is as good-natured and likeable as a meta-humorous pseudo-grindhouse film can get, and that’s worth something in my book.


Mara (2013): Over in Scandinavia it apparently takes three directors to make this – sometimes very pretty to look at – film about young people in a house in the woods – etc, etc. For a time, the whole affair looks and feels like your typical low budget slasher (including quite a bit of gratuitous nudity), perhaps artier shot, then it turns out to be a double-twist thriller that at least tries to play with the audience expectations towards plot twists. While I like the idea, and find the film more than competently shot, I don’t think the plot comes together well enough for the film to be interesting. Even with the twists, it’s just not very interesting, or exciting, or even fun to watch.

In short: WolfCop (2014)

Right, spoilers.

Every 32 years, there’s weird shit happening in an otherwise sleepy US small town. Alcoholic and worst cop ever Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) has rather a bad time of it, for he finds himself victim of a ritual that turns him into a werewolf. His transformation is part of the ass-backwards plan of the shapeshifting reptile people secretly running the town who snuff werewolf blood harvested at the time of a solar eclipse. To keep things handled as easy as possible, they usually turn the least capable people they can get their hands on into their blood donator werewolves, but in Lou’s case, something – possibly thanks to all the alcohol he’s marinated his innards in – goes very wrong and he turns into some sort of super werewolf who just happens to be a much better – though decapitation-happy – cop than the original human.

But will his stupid wolf powers, his wolf mobile (don’t ask), and the help of the only sane person in town, his decidedly more competent colleague Tina (Amy Matysio), be enough to thwart the shapeshifters’ vague evil plans?

I’m generally not too fond of the whole “instant cult film” approach to filmmaking, but I did find myself somewhat charmed by Lowell Dean’s WolfCop. Probably because it does work as an actual horror comedy and not only as an exercise in ironic winking at its audience (something I generally react to with eye-rolling, annoyed muttering and the shaking of fists). Now, it’s not the deepest of comedies, and not every joke is a hit but I really appreciate how most of the humour here is based on setting up a ridiculous situation and then following it with the appropriate logic, which is to say, the logic of the ridiculous, an approach that does at the very least provide the film with an absurd sort of coherence.

From time to time, the film even hits pay dirt, deserving some hearty chuckles for scenes like our hero’s invention of what I can only call the Wolfmobile, or a wolfman/woman sex scene filmed exactly like you’d have found it in 90s action cinema, just that one of the participants is a werewolf in a sheriff deputy’s uniform. As I said, it’s not deep, but it certainly has its moments. WolfCop also gets bonus brownie points for its pleasant use of Tina, who doesn’t suddenly turn from competent to helpless for the film’s finale so our hero has somebody to rescue; instead there’s a lot of female lead and male lead rescuing each other going on. Mainstream movies could learn something from that.

And if that is not enough to entertain you for 80 minutes, there are many spirited practical gore effects, a wolfman get-up that is as silly as it is expressive, and basically never a dull moment.

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,in short,comedy,horror,lowell dean,leo fafard,amy matysio,sarah lind