‘Dark Match’ Director Lowell Dean On Reigniting His Love For Wrestling
For many, Canadian filmmaker Lowell Dean clawed his way into our hearts with his ridiculous feature film Wolf Cop about a cop who becomes a werewolf. Now, he’s back with another blood fest, but this time it follows a ragtag group of wrestlers trying to survive a series of death matches. His new film Dark Match had its world premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival and is a loving ode to wrestling, the craft, and the 1980s.
In Dark Match,
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.
We spoke with Dean about reigniting his love for wrestling, why wrestlers are great actors, and working with a cast who had too much fun on set.
Dread Central: So you said Dark Match has been dormant for a year. Tell me more about that.
Lowell Dean: Sure. We shot it at the end of 2022, and it’s kind of like, I’m not a musician, but I’m guessing what it’s like making an album. It takes forever to finish it, and then someone has a release strategy or you get in a festival and you wait and you sit on it for months. So I’m trying to remind myself of all the hell and the joy of making it about a year ago, and just stoked honestly that it’s finally out there so we can see how people feel.
DC: You’re a wrestling fan, I assume. Did you grow up watching wrestling? Is that a passion of yours?
LD: It’s funny. I don’t want to talk trash about anything, but I was [a fan] when I was a kid for sure. But then when you’re done being Peter Pan and you grow up, suddenly, wrestling is a thing that you sometimes put aside and say, “I’m not into this anymore. I’m too mature for it.” And my kind of journey back to wrestling was about, I think 10 years ago now.
A friend of mine said let’s go to a local wrestling event in Saskatchewan, which is where I live, and I didn’t want to go. I was like, I don’t want to spend Friday night at a wrestling event. But it’s a good friend, so I went and I was so wrong. By the end of the night, I had lost my voice group screaming. I was cheering, I was getting into the storylines, and then it became a habit.
I fell in love with the local wrestling troop and I even asked, “Can I do a documentary on you guys?” And it reignited a love. So I started going to WWE events, and that’s where Dark Match came from. I realized wrestling was like a cult. I was surrounded by the most rabid fans. Honestly, the only fan base similar to me is horror fans. And that’s kind of like my brain said, “Okay, these two things smash ’em together.” And that’s where the movie came from.
DC: Hell yeah. That’s amazing. I was going to say, the Venn diagram of wrestling and horror is almost just a one complete circle. Not quite, but almost there, because again, there’s a lot of horror in wrestling, the villains, the history. I didn’t grow up with wrestling, but I know a decent amount-ish, and oh boy. There’s a lot of history in wrestling.
LD: Yeah, totally.
DC: But I especially love the aesthetic and the editing style here. I wanted to hear more about decisions in the editing process and why you wanted to use these kind of VHS-esque moments as part of Dark Match.
LD: I mean, when I wanted to first make a wrestling movie, the first draft, I remember being like, is this present day and is it going to be an internet thing, like a dark web thing? Then I felt, no, I think this would feel more right to me to set it in the heyday of when I fell in love with wrestling. Then doing the research, Satanic Panic was so big in the 80s, so that felt right. So then once I knew it was going to be the 80s for Satanic Panic and Golden Age of Wrestling, then it really became “what’s it going to look like?” Obviously it’s not going to be a webcam, it’s going to be 80s VHS gnarly underground tape that they’re recording.
One of the things I’m most proud of is the authenticity of those segments and how we shot it. I give props to Karim Hussain, who’s a brilliant cinematographer who shot this film. He did Hobo With A Shotgun and all of Brandon Cronenberg’s films. He brought so much to this film. And the reason I was so happy to work with him was he is all about authenticity. These segments don’t just look like VHS. We actually shot on VHS. And the cool thing about that is there is no coming back from it. You know what I mean?
So traditionally, I think many people would say, “Let’s shoot it in beautiful 4K quality and let’s put a VHS filter on it.” But Kareem was almost like daring me. He’d say, “I have a VHS camera. I will bring it. Let’s film those scenes in VHS.” So we did it, and I was a little nervous, but he’s so talented. That alleviated all my fears. In the edit, working with Dean Evans, the editor, it was just more like, how do you intercut between the two? When can you do it and how can you keep the tempo and not have it be jarring when you go from crisp 4K visuals to the grimy VHS with the pixels?
DC: That’s so cool. But another big shout out to your art and production design departments. I mean, the costumes alone, just getting that 80s look of the outfits was incredible. So how involved were you in that process of helping design or give inspiration for all of the wrestlers’ individual looks?
LD: I mean, I like to work with really talented people, and I have opinions. I think that’s kind of my job as a director. But I also think it’s nice to listen to the opinions of others, and I hope that they’ll bury themselves in, for example, Myron Hyrak with the production design, or Tracey Graham who did our costumes that she’ll say, I’m going to obsessively look at this part of the sandbox and then bring you ideas. Everybody really just zeroed in and they got the material and they got the plan.
One of my most fun things was visiting the costume shop because Tracy and her team, they weren’t just buying stuff off the shelf, they were hand sewing all those costumes.
DC: Very punk rock wrestling, DIY vibes there, that they were actually sewing all of the things together, and not just buying it online. That gives you all that amateur wrestling feel, like each wrestler sewed it themselves.
LD: Every now and then, I would remind them, “Remember these people lived in the 80s and didn’t have access to a bunch of stuff, so if you spend a month working on their costume, it’s wrong.” None of these characters would spend that much time on their costumes.
DC: They threw it together in two minutes and now it’s their look kind of thing. I have some friends who do amateur wrestling. So it was cool to watch Dark Match and think about my friends who train down the street at a theater locally, and all of the cool drills they run every day when they do practice. know people think wrestling isn’t real, but it is a sport. It’s a sport, and it’s still difficult.
LD: Oh, I fully agree with you. I think I already knew when you make a movie like Dark Match, there’s a big portion of critics and people who watch movies in general who are just going to write it off as schlock. They do that to wrestling, too. So to me, it’s like I actually really, as an independent horror filmmaker, relate to wrestlers. We put ourselves out there with minds and our bodies. We work often for not a lot of money or resources. We’re find ourselves in random, weird, dark places with a bunch of people eating weird food.
So this movie has grown my love for wrestlers. I think those who look past what they think Dark Match is and give it a shot will be surprised.
DC: But I mean, speaking of working, you got to work with Chris Jericho, which must have been so cool. I mean, he is obviously a legend and you get to have him as this giant hat-wearing villain. What was it like to direct him?
LD: Really easy, actually. He was one of our last people cast. We were kind of holding out because we needed a famous superstar wrestler who has gravitas and who is a great actor, and the list is not that long. So to get him was a huge sigh relief for me. And I’m not lying when I say it was a five minute conversation about the mood and the energy and how he runs his cult. But a lot of it was in the script. It was all there. So it was more just like, do you have any questions or concerns? Do you like the wardrobe? Do you have any things you want to tweak with it? And then it was just letting him go. I learned years ago that wrestlers are really good actors when you make indie films. I mean, acting is their whole job.
When you’re making indie horror films, people often recommend casting a wrestler. And sometimes snobbish people, even myself at times in the past, are like, “No, I want this to be an actor.” But I can say actors, like independent actors who call themselves actors, sometimes they’re working once, twice a year, if they’re lucky. They’re not practicing their craft as much as they want. But wrestlers are doing it every damn night and also taking a punch to the face. So I’ll never turn down a wrestler if someone wants to put them forward for something, because I know they hustle hard and they can learn lines.
DC: They’ll take a chair to the back. And they can sell hits!
LD: It’s fun. You think it took a long time for Jericho to learn his fights for this movie? You know what I mean? Two seconds probably. His brain works like that. He worked with a coordinator, but yeah, he’s a pro.
DC: That’s so cool. And to get to direct him in a wrestling match. But then also Ayisha Issa, who I’m obsessed with as Miss Behave. I want a movie about her just being a bad bitch and fighting across the country. Again, your whole cast, the chemistry is so cool between them. It feels like this ragtag group of freaks who love each other despite everything. And was that chemistry on set between the actors, between takes? Were they all just a big weirdo happy family?
LD: I will say shockingly so. They got along so well, it was verging on annoying because they were like children.
You don’t want it the other way where it’s like, this person doesn’t talk to this person and this person doesn’t want to come out of their trailer or they don’t want to be in the same room. They got along so well that I kid you not, there were times where we’re like, “Don’t bring ’em to set yet. Because if they get here and we’re not ready for them, they’ll just start partying or having fun or making jokes and we won’t be able to focus.” They were all, I kid you, they were big kids all just having fun. I think we all realized we had a great opportunity and we were making something very hard, but also really fun.
Categorized:Interviews
