Adding to his rapidly-expanding collection of genre-bending curiosities, Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing is somehow both a retro thriller and a prescient black comedy that feels extremely of the moment. It’s noir-inspired, from all periods of noir from the earliest days to the most modern, and deftly faces down the paranoia from each of those eras – of the police, of the media, and of technology.
I have more than one film pal that just doesn’t vibe with the tone that Reece brings to all of his films. A very specific sense of humour that finds something buried deep in subject matter and situations with disturbing and unsettling implications that has no business being as funny as it comes across. I’ll say that somewhere between 2019’s Climate of the Hunter and 2022’s Country Gold, I found myself attuned to Reece’s sensibilities and have managed to find that rhythm in a major way. And the hyper-stylized aesthetic, again simultaneously retro-cool with vaporwave vibes and ultra-modern at once, feels like it was made just for me. Every Heavy Thing is the latest project from the prolific director and somehow manages to mine humour (along with terror) from an epidemic of missing women.
Reece’s take on a 90’s techno-thriller in the vein of Disclosure (1994) or The Net (1995) begins with a literal average Joe (Josh Fadem), an unassuming ad salesman at a local alt-weekly periodical called Metro Weekly. He’s almost a blank slate, as you’d expect from a noirish lead, who’s tasked with reacting to the far more interesting characters and dangerous intrigue that floats in and out of his orbit. As is remarked about him a few times in Every Heavy Thing, Joe’s “almost cool.” Joe is roped into attending a live music performance by Barbara Crampton’s Whitney Bluewill by his hilariously pushy coworker, and agreeable to a fault, tags along. I was getting huge Blue Velvet energy from this scene and when Bluewill ends up dead, Joe is pushed into the pursuit of the sinister William Schaffer (James Urbaniak), a techno-billionaire who is behind the disappearance of multiple women in the city and who is definitely channeling a villain in the vein of Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth.
Joe begins to become unmoored from reality, experiencing nightmares and hallucinations both waking and from sleep, and is unable to talk it through with his partner Lux (Tipper Newton) in fear that she may be put in danger herself. Reece’s particular visual style for these sequences feels reminiscent of video remix culture like the Racer Trash and A69 collectives and is so perfectly disorienting as it builds that you can’t help but feel the confusion and abject terror that Joe experiences, right along with him.
Reece surrounds Fadem with an awesome cast of character actors and great performances that move the film along. The People’s Joker’s Vera Drew has a small but terrific role as Joe’s only high school friend, Alex. John Ennis (one of my personal favourites) provides some of the film’s best lines as Joe’s boss at Metro Weekly. And though it’s on the scant side, Crampton is as iconic as ever in her role as lounge singer Whitney Bluewill. But it’s Urbaniak that steals the film out from under everyone else as Schaffer. Menacing, terrifying, and utterly capable of mayhem, Urbaniak’s Schaffer embodies every frightening notion of the tech industry and then some, and makes explicit the entitlement to our bodies and minds that the Musks, Zucks, and their ilk seem to feel.
Mickey Reece has once again crafted a singular story with Every Heavy Thing. It’s a familiar – I’d almost say comforting if its visual style didn’t produce exactly the opposite feeling – love letter to noir cinema while retaining a gritty, innovative, subversive quality. Packed with little hints, cameos (see if you can spot executive producer Peter Kuplowsky), and surprises but not a single compromise, it might not be for everyone, but Every Heavy Thing is definitely for me and appeals to every sicko impulse I can muster.
Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing is part of the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival lineup. The festival runs until August 3 and ticket, schedule, and other information can be found on the official website.
