By ANDY MAURO
Starring Ayisha Issa, Steven Ogg and Mo Jabari
Written and directed by Lowell Dean
Dept. 9 Studios
Let’s cut to the chase: Your love of DARK MATCH will be directly proportional to your love of wrestling. If you wouldn’t know a DDT from KFC, then you can skip it. If you have indeed smelled the Rock’s cooking, or considered Hulkster’s 24-inch pythons running wild on you, you’re likely to find some enjoyment here. If you have ever paid to see backyard wrestling, own even a single wrestling action figure or can recount Vince McMahon’s whole sordid life story, you’re in for a fun time!
DARK MATCH, which world-premiered at this summer’s Fantasia International Film Festival, kicks off with low-rent wrestling league promoter Rusty (Jonathan Cherry) getting offered $50,000 to perform a “dark match” for a wealthy benefactor named The Prophet (WWE’s Chris Jericho) and his friends at their remote compound. He convinces his prim and proper “face” Kate the Great (Sara Canning) and the equally mean and brooding “heels” headed by Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa) and Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg) to participate in exchange for a piece of the gate. There are a half dozen other wrestlers in their party, but their names don’t matter. They’re just there to get lit on fire, beaten to a pulp, sliced and diced, shot full of holes, eviscerated and decapitated. Yikes! Whatever happened to the simple figure-four leg lock?
The strangest and most interesting aspect of DARK MATCH is the film’s seeming insistence on maintaining kayfabe (keeping up the facade that it’s real when it’s obviously fake). The film’s scenarios are improbable in the extreme, yet are played impossibly straight. The night before the matches, there is a party in which virtually every red flag imaginable is waved by The Prophet’s fanatical followers, but everyone just shows up for breakfast excited to put on a show. The writing and dialogue is shockingly straitlaced given that the subject matter is summoning demons with sacrificial wrestling matches. It took me a while to warm to the tone, which I expected to be a lot more tongue-in-cheek given the ridiculousness of the subject matter.
However, charismatic performances from both Issa and Ogg keep the melodrama humming along, as you can’t help but root for Miss Behave and Mean Joe Lean, and against The Prophet and his followers. Just like in real wrestling! The fight choreography, the ritualistic match types and creative cinematography by Karim Hussain (POSSESSOR) make the decidedly low-budget vibe eminently watchable for the movie’s tidy 94-minute running time.
Much like in writer/director Lowell Dean’s previous efforts WOLFCOP and ANOTHER WOLFCOP, his love of ’80s-era VHS horror, gore, boobs and practical effects are all on display in DARK MATCH. The fans at Fantasia’s sold-out screening had a total blast yelling at the screen, clapping every time their favorite wrestler won and booing whenever The Prophet showed up, keeping the energy high right through to the ending–which delivers an iconic final shot that leaves things wide open for an epic rematch!
