Prolific indie filmmaker Mickey Reece returned to Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival for the premiere of his latest feature, Every Heavy Thing. The cast is ripe with legendary character actors, including Vera Drew (The People’s Joker) and Barbara Crampton (Suitable Flesh, Re-Animator), with Josh Fadem (The Creep Tapes, Better Call Saul) in the lead. Reece really leans into the videotape aesthetic, combining all kinds of glitch art to create a trippy comedic thriller about a high tech serial killer (played to perfection by James Urbanism) who rips through a small Oklahoma town.
The protagonist Joe (Fadem) lives an ordinary life with his long term girlfriend, and sells ads at a local flailing newspaper. On one faithful night out, he crosses paths with William Shaffer, a tech billionaire who also murders women. “[Big tech’s] a neat target for a bad guy” quipped Reece during the Q&A after the screening. Joe becomes entangled in Shaffer’s twisted games as Shaffer tortures him with hallucinatory nightmares. When Joe’s young colleague Cheyenne (played by charming newcomer Kaylene Snarsky) turns her sights towards solving the murders, Joe is forced to confront his own complacency in his community’s problems.
Every Heavy Thing is full of little gems and easter eggs, making this film a really fun ride. The background to the story’s events includes snarky radio show hosts, gun-loving reality TV shows, and a hyper positive liquor store clerk (who introduces the film’s titular mantra). The hallucination sequences alone are a blast for any fan of glitch art. All in all, this film is a solid addition to Reece’s filmography, sure to please his fans.