Crew/Production: Written and directed by Jason Lei Howden, starring Milo Cawthorne and James Blake as the metalheads who start a band.

Plot: A comedy horror with a heavy metal twist from New Zealand. Brodie, a metalhead loser, comes across ancient musical tablature, and inadvertently summons a demon and brings about the end of days in his town.

Thoughts on the film:
• The film’s quite lighthearted, but not always jokey. There’s a drama side-plot of Brodie trying to get with the pretty Medina, who is dating his jock douchebag bully of a cousin, and his fellow-metalhead being a dick and getting with her. That last bit seemed out of character but it was to give some more emotional pull in the final half hour.
• Obviously since it’s from NZ, it features NZ actors with NZ accents, and you never really forget about it! Brodie sounds just like Murray (Rhys Darby) from Flight of the Conchords.
• There’s a couple instances of breasts (especially near the start) but in general it’s mostly gore. That said, for a large chunk of the film, gore is not related to violence (i.e. people vomiting blood as they become possessed, rather than the over-the-top humorous gore finale)
• My favourite bit is when the evil leader sentences a henchment to beheading; so his minions do such straight away (ruining his rug), so he makes them re-do it with tarp on the rug. Amazing.
• A small thing but their “brothers in steel” metalhead handshake is pretty cool (grabbing hands then extending devil horns)
• Also how there’s a representation of how the right metal makes you feel – it transports Brodie into a fantasy land on top of a mountain with large breasted women at his feet. He shows Medina some metal CDs from bands including A*** C***!
• The soundtrack contains some original and some classic metal, ranging from different subgenres – which is excellent. I’d love to get the soundtrack but as an indie film it won’t get a release. As an aside, the original song used to summon the devil -which should be the best/most metal song there- is more of a slow dirge. I suppose it’s supposed to entrance you (which makes sense) but it’s still a poor song!
• Despite them dressing up like KISS to film a music video, one of them is a massive RPG card-playing fan. He has dice with him at all times and teaches them to play – he’s used very well for laughs. He also doesn’t dress metal, staying with polo shirts, shorts and a sensible haircut which is quite funny.
• There’s a lot of dildo-use in the film, including action scenes, for laughs. One of the best uses of high frame right/slow motion cinematography put into film!
• Loved the aside-gags like trying to play the summoning song (I’m not sure if I’m in the right tuning…) and asking about the Devil’s hour, 3am (Pacific or West Coast? Do they adhere to daylight savings?)

Overall this is a fun gore-fest that loves metal, nothing must-see but perfect to cap off a night of horror films.