PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I’m a huge fan of Deathgasm. I’ve watched it many times since it released and have showed it to my horror loving metalhead friends. I’ve been waiting for a sequel for years and now it’s finally arrived with Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon.
Was the sequel worth the 10 year wait? Read on to find out.
Synopsis
Years after surviving the demon apocalypse of the original film, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is washed-up, broke, and stuck in small-town purgatory. But when he learns that NoizeQuest, a battle-of-the-bands competition, is coming to his town, he sees a shot at redemption – and maybe even a second chance with his old beau, Medina (Kimberley Crossman). One problem: his drummer is missing an arm, and the rest of his band is, well… dead. Luckily, Brodie still has pages torn from The Black Hymn, so raising his bandmates from the great beyond is just a riff away. But with every chord comes blood, guts, and the kind of apocalyptic chaos that only Deathgasm can unleash.
Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon was written and directed by Jason Lei Howden. The film stars Milo Cawthorne, Kimberley Crossman, James Joshua Blake, Sam Berkley, Daniel Cresswell, Kieran Charnock, Harrison Keefe, Maggie Nicole Robertson, and Adam Scherr (WWE Legend Braun Strowman). The film features a cameo from Matthew Kiichi Heafy of the band Trvium, who also composed the films score.
Despite my overwhelming enthusiasm for Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon, the film wound up being a mixed bag for me. I loved seeing the entire main cast of the original film return. It was a real treat to see Brodie, Zakk, Dion, Giles and Medina again. I loved all the calls back to the original film, especially Brody and Medina sitting on the park bench together once again. There are some new additions to the cast with Kieran Charnock’s Jesse Dead (who fronts the awful yet wonderfully named Rewind Her Funeral Tape), Harrison Keefe’s Jonno, and Maggie Nicole Robertson’s Ana being the most prominent.
I absolutely hated Jesse Dead and Jonno, almost as much as the uncle and cousin in the first film, thought the respective actors gave great performances. I absolutely loved Ana though and I loved her chemistry with Medina. I wish she was in the movie more. The film is sure to please fans looking for gory kills, we there are a ton of them and I would say the sequel is quite a bit bloodier than the original. My favorite part was Matt Kiichi Heafy’s cameo. I thought it was really funny that Zakk declared himself a vegan zombie.
I really didn’t like Brodie’s actions in this film. In the first film he didn’t know what would happen and when shit hit the fan, he did everything in his power to fix it. Here he knows that he’s playing with dark forces and that bad things could very well go bad, yet he does so anyway in hopes of winning a battles of the bands, getting the massive monetary grand price, and hopefully winning back Medina. It makes Brodie harder to root for and less redeemable.
I loved the back and forth between Dion and Giles in the first film but here they really got on my nerves. Giles was needlessly a dick and Dion kinda just takes it for most of the film. Some of the gags border on tasteless Troma territory (don’t get me wrong, I love me some Troma, though that’s not what I wanted or expected here) such as a scene where a characters cuts off several people’s netheregions at a series of gloryholes. It starts out amusing enough but goes on for way too long and ends up just being too much.
I wasn’t a fan of who the villain was in the film. It didn’t feel true to character or earned, which makes the films ending, though amusing, ultimately frustrating. Fans will be happy that the ending sets up a sequel.
Final Thoughts
As a fan of the first film, Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon feels slightly disappointing. On the positive side it’s great to see beloved characters again, there are some welcome new characters, some fun callbacks, it’s full of gore and it sets things up nicely for a sequel.
On the negative side some of the characters come off pretty grating and irredeemable, some of the gags are pretty overlong and tasteless, and I didn’t really care for the villain.
Overall, Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon is a bit of a mixed bag, though I feel the good slightly outweighs the negative. I still had some fun with it and I would love to see the sequel that is teased. Cautiously recommended to fans of the original.
Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon is in theaters now and on VOD October 13th.
