In “Dark Match” a struggling professional wrestling organization, SAW Wrestling, accepts a lucrative gig out in the isolated countryside. The tantalizing cash is difficult to resist. A small group of wrestlers and the managing promoter Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) pack themselves off and head to the venue .They receive a warm welcome from a rather festive group of people and join the party. Some are drugged in a lair of endless temptations and one even branded with a bizarre Satanic symbol visible at several locations in the venue.
It so transpires that something more sinister than a dark match has been planned for the wrestlers. In professional wrestling a dark match is either before the main card to “warm up” the audience or after the main card to send them home happy. A death match in wrestling is more sinister with dangerous objects such as metal studded props, shattered glass or barbed wire in a brutal and bloody spectacle.
The matches turn deadly for a variety of reasons and blood and guts spurt and fly to and fro.
The crowd wants more than a winner and loser. They want a match with “final consequences” egged on and inspired by their Leader (Chris Jericho) who speaks in Satanic like language to his cult-like congregation. The viewer may recognize the old Satanic twist webbed in the words of Leader such as “We can conquer the heavens” or “We are close to paradise”. But the film takes an interesting Bernardo-Homolka snuff twist where a love of terror is combined with profitability and the bloodlust of wrestling crowds.
No doubts the film mocks professional wrestling as manufactured entertainment but it probes deeper into a more troubling question of the lust for violence and death. Professional wrestling feigns violence and fan hatred of many wrestling characters but in “Dark Match” feigning is replaced with deadly intent.
Not all the “good guys” escape here and the few that do face the evilest opponent imaginable and if you are not rolling in the aisles in a mirthful state man you have missed an important facet of the film! If the film were a dark match it will send you in a happy direction!
“Dark Match” as written and directed by Lowell Dean.
RKS 2025 Film Rating 87/100.
Canadian theatrical release will commence 31January2025.
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