Reviews
‘Every Heavy Thing’ Is A Manic Murder Mystery Masterpiece [BHFF Review]
Mickey Reece creates a one-of-a-kind dream-like descent into danger, death, and delirium that’s as unbelievable as it is unpredictable.
“Every heavy thing falls away.”
It’s become such a rarity for a movie to genuinely, truly surprise its audience. Cinemagoers can sometimes cynically feel as if they’ve seen everything, only for a film like Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing to prove quite the contrary. You have no idea where this movie is going, and it’s glorious.
Every Heavy Thing is the type of film that picks up a hammer, prepares to swing it, but then kicks you instead. It’s always smart to expect the unexpected in a film by Mickey Reece (Agnes, Climate of the Hunter, Country Gold), but Every Heavy Thing is really something special that plays by its own rules and resists conventional categorization. A sweeping crime saga unspools, yet this story is full of such jarring, abrupt turns that radically throw Every Heavy Thing off balance and threaten to topple this spectacle, only for it to build greater momentum. Every Heavy Thing is a hardboiled murder mystery. It’s a slacker hangout comedy. It’s Dadaist filmmaking that’s a sweeping indictment against gentrification. And it’s so much more.
It cannot be stressed enough that Every Heavy Thing is akin to entering an absurdist parallel universe that’s familiar but just distorted enough to feel surreal. Reece expertly crafts such a lived-in universe that’s infinitely odd, but incredibly natural. Every Heavy Thing is like Thomas Pynchon by way of Tim & Eric or Max Headroom doing Brian De Palma. It shouldn’t work, and yet it commits to the bit and never lacks conviction in its lunacy.
Joe (Josh Fadem), an ordinary, listless ad salesman for a local periodical, witnesses a murder and reluctantly gets pulled into this criminal conspiracy. The darkness that Joe has witnessed slowly infects his life. Every Heavy Thing oscillates between extremes, while Joe gets eaten up as he struggles to reconcile all this. A bad situation becomes worse when this murder points to an even bigger epidemic that’s been plaguing the community. Joe’s ratcheting paranoia is played against his comfortable relationship with Lux (Tipper Newton). What was once a source of safety and stability for Joe becomes another cause for concern. Fadem excels in this role, but his chemistry with Newton is just so natural. They’re a delight to watch, even when nothing is happening with them. There’s a blasé brilliance to the slice of life simplicity that Joe and Lux represent.
Alternatively, William Shaffer (James Urbaniak) threatens to dismantle this happiness and tear through Joe’s life. Urbaniak is terrifying as this sadistic, murderous mastermind who is coded like the type of hyperbolized villains that populate David Lynch films. The entire cast is so electric and locked in. Every character is such a perfect little freak. Every Heavy Thing is tense and taut, but it’s also so effortlessly funny. It will have you laughing out loud between the moments of abject terror.
So much of Every Heavy Thing’s personality comes from the film’s retro vibes that feel lost in time. Nicholas Poss’ fantastic synth score beautifully amplifies the film’s unique world. A chaotic editing style stitches this saga together like a VHS that’s started to melt while it’s transferring its video. Striking lo-fi transitions and dream sequences that are truly original and unlike anything else you’ll see all year. Every Heavy Thing is unquestionably one of 2025’s most unique films. It’s so distinctly Reece’s unique vision and such a burst of passion that would be impossible to replicate. So many memorable sequences are bewildering descents into analog glitches and “datamosh” mayhem that makes it feel like your brain has been hacked and is malfunctioning. It’s an endlessly powerful effect. Reece showcases more of his range during a fantastic Alfred Hitchcock/De Palma pastiche where Every Heavy Thing’s b-movie bliss blossoms into immaculately-staged giallo madness.
Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing is such a weird, mysterious journey that demands to be seen and culminates in an incomparable experience. There’s substance beneath all this blinding ambition, style, and creativity. It’s easy to get caught up in the labyrinthine mystery that doesn’t just consume Joe but hardens him into the best version of himself when everything is said and done. Every Heavy Thing is a celebration of film’s versatility and the power of this medium. It’s an exciting stepping-stone in the career of one of the most exciting modern genre filmmakers.
Every Heavy Thing screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival; release info TBD.
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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