Week 10 (Aug 23 – 29) – Mill Creek’s Mausoleum of Mumblegore: The indie wing of low-budget horror or the horror wing of low-budget indie.
“Rule number one: embrace the darkness. Rule number two: kill your fear. And rule number three: live for death.”
Goth, directed by Brad Sykes, dives headfirst into the PVC-slathered, synth-pounding depths of the goth subculture — even if the IMDb trivia page calls out that there aren’t any goth bands on the soundtrack.
The story kicks off with a heavy dose of in media res chaos: our heroine, Chrissy (Laura Reilly), wakes up on a bloody floor surrounded by a mountain of corpses in a cheap tenement, only for another body to tumble through the door before we rewind eight hours. Before long, Chrissy and her boyfriend Boone (Dave Stann, who for this got a BFA Theater degree (English minor) from Kent State University with his Honors thesis being Directing Postmodern Ibsen, which included his adaptation of An Enemy of the People, which had modern dance, a techno soundtrack and non-linear staging) are getting gussied up for a night out at the local club. That’s where they run into a savage, wildly intense woman who goes by the name of Goth (Phoebe Dollar). Yes, literally named Goth, complete with the word tattooed right across her chest.
Goth introduces the couple to a lethal new designer drug called White Light, promising an intense trip that bridges the gap between life and death. After Goth casually saves them from a pair of alley muggers, she drags Chrissy and a reluctant Boone into her van for a neon-lit, blood-soaked descent into madness. What follows is a whirlwind of drug-fueled orgies, brutal stabbings and wild psychedelic flashbacks revealing Chrissy’s dark past, including a sister beaten to death by someone known only as Goth. As the night spirals completely out of control, the boundaries between reality, revenge and hallucinations melt away, leaving a trail of mutilated victims and a mind-bending finale where Chrissy’s true motives come to light.
The film’s mythology didn’t stop in 2003. In 2018, Blood Scream Comics published Goth #1, a prequel comic book written by Natalie Claude and illustrated by Damien Brunk. Director Brad Sykes even hopped on board as a creative consultant to help flesh out the origins of the titular character.
This is so much better than I thought it would be for the title, but Sykes always seems to turn low-budget into something much bigger and more interesting than expected.
You can watch this on Tubi.
