We seem to be right in the middle of a New Wave of Kiwi film comedy. I’m not saying they’re all timeless classics – or any of them, necessarily.
But at least it makes a change from the frequent complaints about many of our films in the past – you know, the over-serious, “cinema of unease” thing. The latest is an ultra-low budget romp called Dead.
Photo: Screenshot
Dead is the work of two popular figures in film and comedy here. Thomas Sainsbury is a prolific performer, playwright and Snapchat satirist.
And Hayden J Weal is a frequent entrant in the 48 Hour Film Challenge – so successful in fact that he’s giving out tips on YouTube.
And it’s these tips that Weal and Sainsbury have applied to Dead - essentially a 48 Hour Film writ large, with a slightly larger budget.
And from the start it’s clear the pair are good at making a very little go a long way.
It opens with a policeman – Jason Tagg, played by Weal himself – waking up to discover he is in fact dead. Dead and in his undies, which is how he remains for the rest of the film.
Cut to a lovable slacker nicknamed Marbles – Thomas Sainsbury – who has an extraordinary talent.
He sees dead people – or rather ghosts – and acts as a conduit between the unhappy deceased and those they’ve left behind.
A useful person for the late Officer Tagg to make contact with if he’s going to solve his own murder, in other words.
Tagg finds Marbles hard at work acting as a sort of human Ouija board and presses him into service.
One thing you’ve got to give Dead is it looks – and sounds – terrific. The budget may be tiny, but director Weal has managed to put together a very experienced crew.
He’s also charmed an impressive cast – including celebrity couple Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Michael Hurst as Marbles’ parents – one living, one dead.
The script advances in the standard 48 Hour Film manner – at a cracking pace, without looking back.
It transpires Tagg is not the only recently dead. Prior to him there were half a dozen others – all linked to a certain gay nightclub.
And because we need some women characters, each of our heroes is given one. Tagg has a sister, Yana, who finds herself strangely drawn to Marbles.
And Marbles has a past – an even stranger ex-girlfriend who mysteriously vanished, to reappear if required later in the story.
It’s a story that goes in several directions, sometimes at once. Coincidentally or not, everyone spends a lot of time ingesting booze and drugs.
And there are more than a few nods to the films of horror director/comedian Jordan Peele before it’s over.
The good things about Dead are it’s well executed, and many of the performances are rather good – even strangely moving at times.
But it does get a bit exhausting if you’re not in the mood and feels rather longer than its modest 90-minute length.
But, unlike a 48 Hour Film Challenge, it doesn’t have an automatic audience. Despite the celebrity cast and some good jokes, Dead is a film that needs a decent-sized audience – with a few drinks in it - for it to work properly.
That’s the trouble with low-budget film-making – making the film is only half the job. A little film needs publicity just as much as a multi-million dollar, big one – maybe even more.
And if you’ve spent all your budget on the film, that leaves nothing over for promotion.
You can lead a horse to water, of course, but that said, you can’t get a horse to drink anything until you have led it to water – often at some expense.
