Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Michael Pickle.
Teens and horror have always been the perfect pairing. Insecurities, uncertainties, coming of age, and ever-evolving hormonal whims.
Horror allows the perfect mirror for society to look at the entirety of these fragile foibles to gain a better understanding of the truly precarious nature of the plight of the teen. In his feature length debut director Michael Pickle looks to tackle all these issues in the context of a troubled high school senior who is haunted by the worst kind of spirits —the malevolent kind.
The Dead Place is a micro-budget affair that has many things working for it. Most importantly, Pickle was able to pull together a group of actors who embrace their teen angst in a way exudes exceptional credibility.
This independent (with a capital “I”) film follows teen actor Isaac Stecker (Idris Veliu) as he simultaneously deals with the unfortunate cocktail of family tragedy and bullying at school. The casting, in the case of Isaac, is little peculiar given the fact that he is easily the most handsome kid amongst the high schoolers, coupled with the fact that he perfectly channels early 1980s Matt Dillon in look, mannerisms, and dialect.
Isaac is trying to balance out his goth-y girlfriend (Lexi Graves), who’s fascinated with the fact that he might be a little nuts and/or possessed by an other-worldly demonic forces. At the same time, he’s contending with his deeply concerned parents. Isaac’s father takes a soft approach to his son’s mental state, while his mother opts for a panicked approach and questions all of her son’s episodes and her husband’s gracious advances towards their son.
The obvious show-stopper in the dead place is the hottest thing in horror from the last several years — David Howard Thornton — AKA Terrifier — AKA Art the Clown. You know it. You’ve seen it. Now, thanks to the good folks at Spirit Halloween, you can even relax in the pool this summer on a full-sized Art the Clown life raft.
Thornton plays one of the many demonic ghouls that Isaac must contend with as he travels from history class to the cafeteria. If you’ve ever wondered what Art the Clown sounded like, or very possibly what he SHOULD sound like, Thornton, as the “New Kid”, fully delivers. The filmmakers, aware that Thornton is 47 years old, even take a clever swipe at a ghoul in his 40s.
Replete with weird gesticulations, strange vocal cadence, and all the truly disturbing elements that make Thorton’s Art the Clown persona, are on display. While Dead Place contains some gory and grizzly bits, don’t come looking for the Terrifier Part V, because this isn’t it.
As Issac’s problems become more profound everything around him ratchets up in a horrifying final act. That said, it’s the final act that appears to be the plane that couldn’t land. While jockeying between very real mental illness and demonic possession, the Dead Place opts against a really position and more or less buries lede.
Should you see Dead Place?
We mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, The Dead Place is a stripped down production. It’s clear that whatever money that was available to produce the film was tied up in the teen actors and a singular special effect prop for David Howard Thornton as the “New Kid.” Don’t go looking for the next Weapons, because this is not that
Yet, it’s rife with really authentic dialogue and acting by all the teens involved. Even though Isaac does his best, and somewhat distracting, Matt Dillon impersonation throughout the film, the teens truly deliver.
The Dead Place is a story that you’ve seen before, but it remains a story that needs to be told. Bullying is bad. Mental health is important. Families are complicated. In all cases, the editorial for these all-too-important topics could be have been far more sharp.
The Dead Place is likely Rated R and streaming at BloodStreamTV.
The trailer is available here: https://bloodstreamtv.com/show-details/the-dead-place-2026-trailer