Deathgasm

  Kiwis have a very respectable batting average with comedies, and that goes double for horror comedies. Deathgasm just goes to fortify those statistics; This is a very likeable, very funny, extremely bloody slice of madness that does its best to be metal as fuck.

DP

 Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is a sweet-natured metal nerd who's just moved into town, to live with some extremely conservative relatives.
 His life consists of the expected, constant, heightened cavalcade of suffering and humilliation of outsiders in teen comedies. Constantly bullied, treated as a pariah at school, and resented at home, he falls in with other nerds at school (Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell) and befriends Zakk, a 'cool' metalhead (James Blake) at a record store. The next step, obviously, is to form a band - the titular DEATHGASM (lower case, Zakk insists, is for pussies).

 Zakk is your typical bad apple, but you can understand the appeal he'd hold for social pariahs like Brodie and friends, and the power he'd have over them - at one point, when everyone is getting a turn sharing ideas, Zakk grabs the camera and points it back to himself; It's a very funny act of fourth-wall breaking, but it also rings very true.
 Meanwhile, Brodie nurses a crush for Median (Kimberley Crossman), a girl who's both obviously out of his league and predestined by teen movie conventions to fall in love with him. At least that cringe-worthy development is handled sensitively by trying to flesh out her character and giving her a little agency.

 All of that is a lot of setup for a movie with a graphic castration and multiple deaths by sex toys. The carnage finally arrives when the band plays the Black Hymn, an occult doom metal ditty with the power to summon Aeloth, the Lord of the Blind. It causes most people in town to puke blood, rip their eyes out, and turn into Evil-Dead-style deadites.
 So the band (plus Medina) need to find a way to survive the night, fight off rival cultists trying to get the music sheets for the Hymn, and try and find a way to prevent Aeloth from manifesting in the mortal plane.

 The animated doodles at the beginning might as well be a statement of intent - one of them features a guy in a pentagram projectile-shitting his viscera... something that's kind of echoed within the movie. The violence takes its cues from extreme metal album covers and lyrics (think Cannibal Corpse), so expect some brutal and very bloody mayhem handled with panache and an impish sense of fun. Someone rocks a tee of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste tee at one point, which is as honest a homage as any of the musical references.

 It's not just the gore, either - there's a very respectable attempt to be metal as fuck in every sense; Zakk gets into a swordfight wielding two chainsaws, Medina splits a guy's head in half with an axe, and both she and Brodie get an epic -and very funny- representation of the transportative qualities of good music in general and metal in particular.

 This specificity makes the movie essential for metalheads: Someone jokes about pulling a Burzum, Anal Cunt gets a mention, there's an excellent joke at Mayhem's expense and a certain (in)famous video from Emperor is spoofed. The soundtrack didn't speak to me as much (I only recognized Emperor and Isahn) but it sounds good and encompasses multiple genres.

 Other than that, it's still a very enjoyable movie as long as you're ok with its over-the-top nature. Writer/Director Jason Howden has obvious affection for his characters, and while his determination to keep the movie upbeat results in some corniness, he doesn't neglect to thread in some very solid jokes all over. He and his cast have a very solid comic timing, and for all its budget limitations, the film does look pretty good and has a pretty varied palette (cinematographer: Simon Raby).
 It's a little messy, but energetic, heartfelt and funny as all hells. And, yeah, fucking metal.