Latest news with #DarkMatch
CBC
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
New indie horror wrestling movie from Saskatchewan filmmaker Lowell Dean hits theatres
Dark Match, an indie horror film starring Chris Jericho, Steven Ogg and Ayisha Issa, follows a low-tier wrestling company in the '80s that accepts a lucrative gig in a remote backwater town. Cast and crew from the Edmonton-shot movie will be in Regina on Tuesday for a special screening.
CBC
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Wrestler and 'scream king' actor Chris Jericho embraces role in Canadian slasher flick Dark Match
From playing a washed-up rock star in 2010's MacGruber to a gruff psychiatric hospital orderly in last year's Terrifier 3, pro wrestler Chris Jericho has built quite an eclectic acting resume. Yet a realm he's steered clear of on the big screen is the very one where he made his name: the squared circle. "I don't really like doing wrestling-related movies because I wrestle, and I find that they're a little bit clichéd most of the time," the Winnipeg native says on a virtual call from New York. "And frankly, a lot of them aren't very good." But when the script for slasher Dark Match came Jericho's way, it hit him like a steel chair shot. The fact that it was written by Lowell Dean, the Saskatchewan director behind 2014 cult horror-comedy WolfCop — a personal favourite of his — only sweetened the deal. Jericho was especially swayed by the villain Dean envisioned for him: the Prophet, a deranged cult leader with sinister plans for a travelling group of wrestlers. "I was pleasantly surprised at how well-written the script was and how deep the character of the leader was," the AEW star recalls, adding he felt it was a role he could lose himself in. "We worked really hard to make people forget that it's Chris Jericho. It's just this wacko cult leader murdering people in the ring." Dark Match, hitting Canadian theatres Friday, follows a low-tier wrestling company in the '80s that jumps at a lucrative gig in a remote backwater town. Before long, the grapplers — including Ayisha Issa of CTV's Transplant and Steven Ogg of AMC's The Walking Dead — realize the local community is under the grip of Jericho's crazed messiah, who's planned the event as part of a deadly game. Jericho also served as executive producer of the Edmonton-shot film to ensure the wrestling aspects felt authentic. The 54-year-old drew on his three decades in the business as a crafty, larger-than-life showman, from his many title reigns in WWE to his current run as a heel in AEW. He says the indie circuit grind in Dark Match took him back to the early days of his career, working for small-time wrestling promotions across the Prairies. "The first few years, I was travelling in vans, up and down the roads of Saskatchewan and Alberta and Manitoba. I never stumbled onto a satanic cult, but there's quite a few shows that were just weird," he says. "You'd go to a town where it says, 'Population: 250' and there'd be 500 people. Where'd they come from? They came down from the mountains. Like, you don't think there were some creepy people there?" Jericho is becoming a familiar face in the horror genre, taking on gruesome roles in Damien Leone's hit Terrifier franchise and Kevin Smith's 2022 slasher comedy anthology KillRoy Was Here. "I'm a scream king now," he says with a laugh. He considers himself a lifelong horror buff, having grown up on classics like 1941's The Wolf Man and 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon. "I can remember being a kid and there were late-night horror movies on TV, like pre-VCR. My mom would let me watch the movies, but I had to sleep first," he says. "I got up every time. You don't have a chance to see Dracula A.D. 1972 if you sleep in. You can't go rent it or stream it the next day. It's gone! So that's where my whole horror movie obsession started." Though he tends to like darker fare, Jericho isn't opposed to a little shmaltz. He starred in 2023 UPtv romantic drama Country Hearts and its sequel, Country Hearts Christmas, as the concerned father of two sisters torn between chasing their dreams of music stardom and helping their family's horse-breeding business. "There's no role too weird or too sentimental for me to do," he says. Jericho is keen to dive into more acting projects, but while some have speculated his wrestling career may be nearing its end, don't expect him to hang up the tights any time soon. "I'm not going to wrestle forever. I don't want to wrestle forever, but right now, I still enjoy it. I feel great. I can still contribute and still perform at a high level, so there's no reason to stop. But if the right [acting] opportunity came up, I would do it," he says.
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dark Match review – satanism meets wrestling in backwoods grindhouse gorefest
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, whose 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'. Dean pulls out all the retro stops, bathing his extravaganza in lurid giallo hues, cloaking Miss Behave's premonitions in gauzy VHS-vision, and weaving his camera lairily around the ring. Given the cultist milieu it's rather reminiscent of Panos Cosmatos's 2018 banger Mandy, but quite some way short of the same degree of unhinged perversity. Dean's brand of satanism seems for show in comparison, with the elements having only superficial bearing on these supposedly ritualistic bouts. With Miss Behave and Joe Lean bunkered up apocalyptically in the changing rooms as their colleagues dwindle, the film is also a bit of a John Carpenter throwback, to the likes of The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13. But considering the innate ludicrousness of the premise, these seem like the wrong Carpenters: a bit of Big Trouble in Little China smarm would have added some bounce on the canvas. More given to a rueful kind of heroism, the visually overworked Dark Match feels oddly underworked at the same time. Dark Match is on Shudder and AMC+ from 31 January.
