We get a selection of indie screeners through, not many, but some. Some of them look interesting, others do not. The trailer for Dead Lover looked, umm, interesting. The most interesting thing about it was that it was presented in Stink-O-Vision, well, at the cinema, not at home.
Since mainstream cinema is generally dull these days, I thought I would try Dead Lover, mostly because it didn’t look mainstream.
Dead Lover stars Grace Glowicki, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow, and Ben Petrie. Glowicki writes and directs.
The Story
The story is one of love, death, and smells:
A lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses finally meets her dream man, but their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap experiments.
We meet the gravedigger (Glowicki) and are told to scratch-n-sniff the first card. Sadly, I didn’t have the card, but I imagined the smell wasn’t good; like one of your own farts, that’s so bad, you have to leave the room for.
The gravedigger wants true love, but the smell puts people off. Isn’t that smellist? She ends up meeting a man, who doesn’t mind the smell; in fact, he’s turned on by it. The path of love is open, and they wander down it.
Sadly, the man was killed, and all that survived is a finger. The gravedigger has the idea of recreating the man from the finger, and I’m not going to spoil the rest. Think Frankenstein, but smelly.
The Cast
I have to say, the cast in Dead Lover was fun, because they were all having fun. If you saw the trailer, you know it’s not going to win any Oscars, but they are funny, in a camp sort of way.
Glowicki, as the gravedigger, hams it up because she knows exactly what Dead Lover is. There’s no point in taking it seriously, so just lean into the camp and have fun with it.
The rest of the cast do the same, and I found myself laughing with them at times. It was more about chewing the scenery than it was about telling the story. This was fine with me.
Overall
I can’t find much else to say about Dead Lover, really. It’s not mainstream, but also, it’s very niche. It felt like a student play, where all the family and friends have been invited to watch it. They all say how good it was, but are just being overly polite.
I’m sure the movie means something to Glowicki, and you know what? I would love to see her do something else, something with more of a budget.
The Stink-O-Vision idea would have been fun. As I said, I was invited up to London to see it, with the scratch-n-sniff cards, but couldn’t make it. I imagine it would have been like seeing a William Castle movie. Although some of the smells contained bodily fluids, so maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed it that much.
For starters, one thing they could spend the money on is a set. To save money, most of the scenes are shot with a black background, which kind of works. As I said, if you see this as a play, then that tone does the job.
This isn’t going to be for everyone. I’m sure there will be a small cult following, but I’m not one of them. I like the unusual, I like the different, but Dead Lover is a little too unusual and different for me. Am I glad I saw it? Yes, it made me laugh, but I won’t be watching it again.
I’ve giving Dead Lover a solid 2 out of 5 stars. It’s different, very different, and good for a laugh, but it’s certainly not going to be for everyone.
Dead Lover is out now, in selected UK cinemas.
