Rich in spirit and performance but light in the execution department, Dark Match has a great concept that will easily appeal to genre buffs, wrestling enthusiasts, and the crossover area between the two, but it struggles to hit its own gory sweet spot. It’s well cast and the general idea of the story – about a bunch of independent wrestlers in the 1980s stuck in a life or death situation – is solid. But it’s tough to look at visually and some of the more elaborate genre concepts are so overthought that writer-director Lowell Dean (WolfCop, Die Alone) muddies the waters even further. Dark Match is a film where less would be more, or it’s at least crying out for a different kind of “more.”
The year is 1988 and the promotor of S.A.W. – Stars of Amateur Wrestling – has received a lucrative booking offer he can’t refuse. The head booker, Rusty (Jonathan Cherry), has been offered fifty grand if he can bring his merry band of grapplers up to a snowy podunk town, but it has to be this weekend. With some of his biggest stars in tow – including heavily pushed babyface Kate the Great (Sara Canning), her biggest rival “the Trinidadian terror” Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa), and aging heel #1 contender for the men’s title Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg) – Rusty makes his way to the town, only to be greeted by some unusual, oddly friendly locals. It turns out that the show – which isn’t supposed to be taped or televised – is being produced by former wrestler The Prophet, a.k.a. Dave (played by real life ring superstar Chris Jericho), who has started believing his old gimmick and become a cult leader. The Prophet forces the wrestlers to compete in a variety of gimmick matches based around the four elements where death is the only way to victory.
Personally, as an avid fan of horror and wrestling, Dark Match has a concept that sounds like music to my ears, but Dean is letting his own concept down by overthinking things. If Dark Match had been a simple good vs. evil story – with Issa and Ogg functioning as the primary heroes – this could’ve been breezy fun. The main characters themselves aren’t the problem here. Issa, Ogg, Cherry, Canning, and Jericho each have a lot to work with and deliver top notch work that keeps Dark Match easily watchable even when it’s letting the audience down. The romantic relationship between Miss Behave and Joe Lean, and the female wrestler’s personal issues with being cast as a mean black villain instead of a credible, heroic champion give the viewer something added to root for, and emerges as Dean’s best and most endearing story elements.
But when it comes to actually fleshing out the premise, Dean doesn’t have a handle on much of his plot. In addition to The Prophet, there’s another menacing, mysterious man (Michael Eklund), lurking around the periphery that doesn’t add much, and the film’s biggest villain turns out to be a character that’s barely in the film at all once all is revealed. There are plenty of other locals and wrestlers who seem like they’re going to become big deals, and with the exception of a mute luchador (Mo Adan, also a real life wrestler), none of them are made out to be much of anything at all. And when it comes to the gimmick matches themselves that the film spends so much time hyping up, it feels like Dean isn’t much of a wrestling fan, coming up with concepts that make almost no sense, in spite of their gory and campy nature. No amount of claret can make up for how silly and awkward the matches are. Dark Match gives up the ghost by making almost all of its major set pieces into lacklustre affairs.
Making matters much worse is the way that Dark Match visually follows through on the first half of its title. Dean has delivered a terribly lit, headache inducing piece of work to look at. Showing the utmost devotion to unnecessary “mood lighting,” Dean’s film looks like someone bought every crazy coloured light they could from Spencer’s Gifts and demanded all of them be used within a 20X20 storage locker. While there’s a certain degree of garishness to be expected from the elevated world of professional wrestling and the large personalities that are drawn to it, the visual aesthetic is all wrong here. It’s not gritty or goofy to look it, it’s just off putting. Then again, Dean can’t fully decide if he wants Dark Match to be gritty or goofy, so the odd visuals might stand as some sort of compromise.
Instead of playing like the supernatural riff on something like a campy take on Green Room where a punk band has been replaced by performers of a different kind and the Neo-Nazis are now Satanists, Dark Match hits like an unfinished thought. That might be overthinking what’s meant to be a genre lark, but these things are the difference between a great final product and unfulfilled potential. The idea is there. The players are all in place. The gore is plentiful. But Dean can’t keep his own ideas on the mat long enough to get that all important three count.
Dark Match opens in select Canadian theatres on Friday, January 31, 2025. In the U.S., it will be streaming on Shudder the same day.
