Due, in part, to some New Year’s resolutions I’ve been exposed to a large amount of ‘fit-fluencer’ content in my various social media feeds lately. One opinion I’ve heard repeated a few times and which I’ve found to be useful in my own ‘fitness journey’ is that part of reforming one’s diet means leaving room for some junk food between the healthy stuff to keep binges and cravings at bay.
I think the same is broadly true of movies. I love a good, heady drama or a weighty horror that trades in the nuances of grief, or just fucks you up with a historical-based gutpunch of a story that you never want to watch again when it’s over. That’s the kind of film that, even if it does psychic damage to you, you feel good about having watched it. Like that kale salad. But you can’t eat kale salad every day. Or, you shouldn’t.
Wolfcop director Lowell Dean’s new wrestling-based horror, Dark Match, is a bowl of onion rings with the good ranch dressing drizzled over top. It’s an extra-large poutine with the bacon add-on. No part of this adventure is particularly nourishing, and you probably won’t learn anything from it, but it’s stick-to-your-ribs schlock that satisfies on an intestinal level.
Set in 1988, when the world of professional wrestling was full of tiny regional promotions that ran the roads and made little towns, Dark Match follows the performers of SAW; an independent company made up of about a dozen performers and their promoter Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry). SAW’s main women’s attraction is Nick, aka Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa) who also goes by the “Trinidadian Trickster.” Even though she’s popular as a villain, Nick resents that she’s cast as one – almost certainly because she’s Black – against the blonde-haired babyface Miss Kate “The Great” (Sara Canning) who is not exactly on her level as a performer. Nick is also in a complicated relationship with the promotion’s aging top star Joe Lean (Steven Ogg, whose every scene harkens back to Grand Theft Auto 5’s Trevor, whom he voiced).
Rusty rounds up the whole crew – Nick, Kate, Joe, tag team Thin (Justin Lawrick) and Thick (Jonathan Lepine), the always-masked Enigma (Mo Jabari), and Lazarus Smashley (Leo Fafard) – to travel to a remote, rural community to perform at a strangely well-paying gig. When the group arrives, they’re greeted with a hedonistic party already underway, which is part kegger and part ritualistic celebration called Lupercalia. The wrestling event that SAW is to put on the following day is the capper to this celebration.
All of this is overseen by The Prophet (Chris Jericho) who is the leader of this bunch, but also answers to a higher power to which sacrifices must be made. Intoxicated by the drinks at the party, most of the SAW roster don’t register that they’re the sacrifices here, but something about him rings familiar to Joe.
After a hazy and confusing night, the wrestling finally commences in a series of five themed matches – Wind, Earth, Water, Inferno, and Spirit – which are each connected with the ritual sacrifices. The SAW crew are sequestered in a room by armed guards until their match, so they don’t bear direct witness to the bloody fates of their friends until it’s too late.
The matches themselves are clunky and not exactly pleasing to wrestling fans from a workrate perspective, but horror and gorehounds will be satisfied with the amount of blood spilled as they wear on. Normally you don’t get the chance to see wrestling performed under duress outside of WWE’s Saudi shows, but there’s a rich vein of horror to mine there that reminded me of Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (2015), which featured a punk band roped into a gig for a Nazi sect.
Ultimately, though not a deep experience by any means, Dark Match has a (sometimes literal) cult classic feel to it from a banging, period-accurate soundtrack with tracks like Trooper’s ‘Raise A Little Hell’, KISS’s ‘Shout it Out Loud’, and Cameo’s ‘Word Up’. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Chris Jericho vehicle without a track from his band, Fozzy, either. On the acting end, no one here’s going for any awards but Issa and Ogg, and one of my favourite actors Michael Eklund provide unexpected depth to their characters in a film that could easily handle something phoned-in.
Dark Match is a film that, perhaps as a product of lowered expectations, surprised me both with it’s depth and authenticity to the world of independent pro wrestling in the 1980’s. The Wrestler or The Iron Claw, it ain’t, but as a fun, pulpy genre project that would play beautifully in a grindhouse atmosphere to a midnight movie crowd, it’s exactly the kind of schlock you might need.
Dark Match comes to Canadian theatres and to the Shudder streaming service in the US this Friday, January 31, 2025 from Vortex Media. Check out the film’s official website for showtimes and more details!
