Dark Match 2024
Sinopsis
A small-time wrestling company accepts a well-paying gig in a backwoods town only to learn, too late, that the community is run by a mysterious cult leader with devious plans for their match.
Cast
- Ayisha Issa as Miss Behave
- Steven Ogg as Joe Lean
- Sara Canning as Kate the Great
- Chris Jericho as Prophet
- Michael Eklund as Spencer
- Leo Fafard as Lazarus Smashley
Review
Presumably there are easier ways to invoke Satan than organising a multi-bout wrestling tournament-cum-occult ceremony, but practicalities are low on the priority list of Lowell Dean’s fifth feature. Dark Match’s chief preoccupation is cramming in as much grindhouse gristle as possible as a bevy of luchadores perform for a mob of rabid cultists, with much haemoglobin decorating the arena floor. Energetically executed in order to hide an essentially knuckle-trailing concept (true to the wrestling tradition, to be fair), it somehow ends up less fun than it should be.
As a heel for the 80s Saw wrestling league, Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa) is disgruntled at never getting a title shot. So when her cokehead manager Rusty (Jonathan Cherry) receives a $50,000 offer for his posse to take part in a private tournament at a backwoods complex, she, lover Joe Lean (Steven Ogg) and the rest of the troupe jump in the van. On arrival, they’re wined and dined – and drugged enough to pay scant attention to a programme promising elementally themed “air/water/earth/fire” bouts, as well as the sinister leader’s (Chris Jericho) toast “to sacrifice”.
