A ghosting story as much as a ghost story, this film sees twentysomething office drone Alex (Blu Hunt) strike gold on dating app called Friktion. Uncannily attuned to her emotions, hunky barista Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen) appears to be the elusive perfect match. So after several blissful hook-ups, Alex can’t believe it when he suddenly blanks her messages – and is appalled to walk into a bar to witness him use the same line on another date: “We don’t really need to talk, do we?”
After making inquiries regarding his whereabouts in the intervening time, Alex learns something shocking: that apparently she matches with dead people. With Kyle’s amnesiac revenant now haunting Alex, director Elric Kane deftly modulates this mashup of state-of-dating drama, erotic thriller and light supernatural foray. In the initial stages, he maintains a mood of uneasy languor as blase Alex navigates her carousel of sexual possibilities. But he switches to a mode of abrupt Lynchian dislocations and ruptures as the increasingly bunny-boilerish Kyle monopolises her life.
Maybe the outwardly perfect Kyle, and Alex’s spiralling obsession with him, represents the algorithmic death-drive underlying the hunt for love on the apps. With Kane’s talent for ambience, it’s a point most seductively made in film’s earlier sections, with his protagonist unravelling in the hands of her mysterious reconstituted lover, like a gender-flipped Vertigo. But the slasher-type direction increasingly taken by the film – as various other paramours, including Alex’s snarky co-worker (John Karna), are targeted by Kyle – is a bit silly and awkwardly executed. This is where the film’s Lynchian effects seem most cut-and-pasted.
Hunt, though, gives an excellent performance in the lead role, agilely running the gamut from deadened admin serf and hipster-bar dating veteran, to infatuated young lover, to abuse victim. She brings emotional suppleness and complexity to what is – despite some flaws – a bold and stylish take on the endless samsara of digital romance.
• The Dead Thing is on Shudder and AMC+ from 14 February.
