Content Advisory: Excessive or gratuitous violence
FILM FESTIVAL
Blood in the Snow
Blood in the Snow 2024
This Review Is an Expansion of Our Original Review Published as Part of Our Coverage of Fantasia 2024
The stars of a 1980s professional wrestling league find themselves part of a Satanic cult’s ritual in Dark Match. SAW is a ragtag 1988 wrestling league managed by Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) and featuring a roster of stars that includes Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg), Lazarus Smashley (Leo Fafard), Enigma Jones (Mo Adan), Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa), and her rival Kate the Great (Sara Canning). Rusty accepts a $50,000 offer to host a show at a rural compound. However, it soon turns out that this Lupercalica event is a Satanic sacrificial ritual run by The Prophet (Chris Jericho), the former arch-rival of Mean Joe Lean.
Dark Match Synopsis
Dark Match is a professional wrestling-themed horror film written and directed by Lowell Dean (Wolfcop, Supergrid, Die Alone). The plot of the film finds the roster of a 1980s wrestling league lured to participate in a Satanic ritual, where the matches are fights to the death. Professional wrestling superstar Chris Jericho plays The Prophet, a former SAW star, who has now become a Satanic cult leader.
While typically viewed as the villains of the wrestling world, Lowell Dean decides to make the heels of SAW the protagonists of Dark Match. Leading the way is Ayisha Issa in a breakthrough role as Miss Behave, who shares a frenemy relationship with the promotion’s top female babyface Kate the Great, played by a scene-stealing Sara Canning (The Burning Season, Influencer). Miss Behave is in a romantic relationship with SAW’s top heel Mean Joe Lean, played by character actor Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead, Scared Shitless), who turns out to have a history with the mysterious Prophet.
My Thoughts on Dark Match
One of Lowell Dean’s inspirations for the plot of Dark Match is now he interpreted the fans of professional wrestling as akin to a cult, so he made a horror film that literalizes this fact. Dark Match features very little of the comedy from Dean’s debut film Wolfcop and is instead a very dark and violent film, with most of the matches ending in extremely gory fashion. The way the film is constructed, with each match being a different chapter, makes Dark Match similar to the earlier pro-wrestling-themed horror film Monster Brawl.
Despite being a horror filmmaker first and a wrestling fan second, Lowell Dean is able to replicate the atmosphere of pro wrestling’s heyday of the 1980s. This is particularly true in Dark Match‘s opening scene, featuring stereotypical pro-wrestling announcing performed by Dean regular Jonathan Cherry as the SAW promoter Rusty. Many of the wrestlers in the film are interpolations of 1980s stars, with Leo Fafard’s Lazarus Smashley being a Hulk Hogan type and the Road Warriors-like tag team The Beast Bros.
Dark Match standout performances by Ayisha Issa, Steven Ogg, and of course Chris Jericho. As The Prophet, Jericho isn’t merely a copy of his usual pro-wrestling persona, with the character having a sinister ulterior motive on top of his cult’s Satanic ritual. Featuring violent and gory action and an insane final moment, Dark Match is worth checking out for professional wrestling fans also into horror.