Sean Parker
How the hell does anyone talk about a Mickey Reece film? The first film I saw from the director was Climate of the Hunter, which I caught during a film festival back in 2020. The film, about two aging women becoming increasingly cruel toward one another as they attempt to impress a man who might be a vampire, was very different, almost as if Tarantino had made a grindhouse exploitation follow-up to Death Proof while pitching it as a Robert Altman film. It’s been clear ever since, to me, that Reece has a style all his own. One, he’s more interested in enticing cinephiles to experience, contemplate, and discuss rather than provide mainstream diversionary entertainment. Reece wants you to feel the weight of his movies’ themes and consider their precision in your head, right up until you need a rewatch. Every Heavy Thing is exactly that film.
Prior to Fantasia, the draw for Every Heavy Thing was emanating through every behind-the-scenes photo Barbara Crampton was releasing on her social media. Well, the marketing worked. Like a good horror fan, all I need to hear is that Crampton is in the film and it doesn’t take much additional convincing. Of course, the allure of her photos, picturing the actress singing in a dark nightclub, presented parallel reference to scenes of Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet. That was all the film needed to have my attention, but the Lynchian connections don’t stop there.
Every Heavy Thing stars Josh Fadem, who some may recognize from his four-episode appearance in Twin Peaks: The Return or as the Camera Guy in Better Call Saul. Fadem plays Joe, a bit of an ordinary schlub who works as an ad salesman for Hightown’s last-standing alt-weekly. Joe has a good life, usually spending his nights with co-workers waiting for his long-time girlfriend, Lux (Who Invited Them’s Tipper Newton), to come home from her job as a nurse at the hospital. When Joe’s co-worker Paul (What Josiah Saw’s Chris Freihofer) becomes desperate for someone to accompany him to a show to see Whitney Bluebill (Crampton), Joe obliges, not knowing the night will change his life forever.
Reece’s opening scene sets up much of what’s next. Like something out of a ’70s giallo, Reece opens on a topless conversation and ends the scene on a brutal murder. When it introduces Joe as the film’s POV character, it begins delving into radio talk show talking points about big tech companies and a sudden rash of women going missing. Meanwhile, the Metro Weekly is pushing a cover story about landmine fields.
When Joe parts ways with Paul at the end of the night, he ends up witnessing a murder. Before he has the opportunity to even do anything about it, the killer sets his sights on him, even revealing himself by name. William Shaffer (Oppenheimer’s James Urbaniak) isn’t interested in killing Joe; he’s more interested in torture. He tells Joe he’s going to let him go to perform an experiment. If Joe tells anyone about the encounter, William will find Joe and end his life.
From this point on in Every Heavy Thing, Joe’s life becomes rather surreal. His co-worker, Cheyenne (Quadrant’s Kaylene Snarsky), has a lead on the murder, which Joe tries to debunk. His strange behavior upends his girlfriend’s life, making her paranoid about a secret she’s keeping from Joe. Meanwhile, William is driving Joe insane, appearing in dreams which are bleeding into his reality.
Before encountering William, Joe is a relatively laid-back kinda guy, taking things as they come, harboring no resentment for any person or group, and able to articulately discuss things without acting somewhat crazed. But an introduction to William is also an introduction to the future, and his techno-nightmare begins, making him anxious and deranged, as he lashes out at his wife and co-workers. The way it feels after we’ve interacted with people on the internet. There’s no real identity crisis in Joe at any time, despite William trying to invoke one, possibly part of a larger experiment. When you finally see William as a voyeuristic bully, it becomes pretty clear who he represents, though he could be a stand-in for just about any tech mogul.
Reece paints a strange portrait. There’s a confluence of pinnacle achievements from the old world arriving at the same time as tech companies in Hightown propose the future. While that may sound as if it would fit if Every Heavy Thing were a late-’80s or early-’90s set film, the film takes place in the present day. Reece, an Oklahoma City native, uses the capital city as his modern muse, and it’s a fine choice given the themes of his film. While New York, San Francisco, and many coastal cities are arguably among America’s most technologically advanced, many places in the middle are often overlooked. Believe it or not, there are still some places that don’t have access to stream-worthy broadband and were very angry about Netflix’s choice to abandon their DVD-by-mail service in 2023.
Here’s where the conversation gets a little more provocative.
The People’s Joker multihyphenate Vera Drew enters the film as Alex, a trans woman whom Joe has known since grade school. Happy to re-meet his dear friend for the first time since her transition, Joe and she make plans to go out for drinks and catch up. At one point, Alex sort of slyly inquires if Joe has ever had any interest or curiosity in pursuing Queer romances, since Joe has historically always been very accepting of her. Joe kindly says he’s never had the inclination, and the conversation continues without ego or anger. It’s here that Every Heavy Thing introduces an evolutionary prowess, one suggesting acceptance as a higher evolutionary state.
Those intricate radio talk show conversations become a little stranger as we continue to hear them, as well. Eventually, one program with male and female perspectives becomes somewhat condescending and dismissive toward the female. Additionally, all of the violence imparted in Every Heavy Thing is against women, too.
The subtext becomes very compelling, though it can be a little difficult to get a view of the forest through the exceptionally thick trees. Every Heavy Thing gets damn heavy, in fact, as Reece compares the human race in its current state to the era before the internet and the barbarism of neanderthals, particularly the ones trolling today’s internet. The film daringly asks if we’re even ready to pursue AI and if the technical advancements we’ve made since the internet have actually advanced our culture or are dumbing us down into incivility. Reece considers Female and Queer experiences in the current climate, as well as the elevated mindset of anyone pursuing and supporting love in all its forms. He then rationally contemplates whether advanced technology being forced on society by misogynistic tech bros could be hurtful at this juncture. Perhaps, the human race as a whole is just like Hightown, where some places have developed to love and accept people while others remain stuck in a 56K world waiting for their upgrade.
There is a scene at the end where William and Joe have their final conversation. In a way, it mimics the conversation Joe had with Alex in the bar. During that conversation, Alex admits she always thought she and Joe were sharing a similar experience growing up, and I think there’s a poignancy in that for Alex, who has to accept that Joe is only “almost cool.” William attempts to force things on Joe, unwilling to accept the way things are. There’s a lot to explore in this life, but there’s a lot of stuff that people want to sell you on that may not be right for you at this time. Reece gets Socratic in the finale, asking the viewer to know thyself and stop listening to all the noise.
David Lynch said, “Fix your hearts or die,” and Mickey Reece seems to be seconding the notion on Every Heavy Thing. The movie can be as dense as an encyclopedia when it comes to themes and metaphors, and I could spend pages highlighting every(heavy)thing, including the massive references to Lynch’s work. From William Shaffer’s wardrobe looking a little like Robert Blake’s in Lost Highway, to the array of Twin Peaks character qualities, Mulholland Drive imagery, and of course, Whitney Bluebill’s Blue Velvet performance.
Fans of Lynch will want to keep an eye on Every Heavy Thing’s release, and if you love weird, trippy, technothrillers, you might want to as well. There are top-notch performances, some fantastic retro-future surrealism, and a few jarring surprises. This is a movie that will sit in your head for days. It’s certainly still sitting in mine.
Every Heavy Thing held its World Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival on Monday, July 21, and encored on Wednesday, July 23. Check out the film’s page on the Fantasia website for more information.
EVERY HEAVY THING (2025) Official Tease
Writer/Director Mickey Reece returns with a pitch-black comedy set against the unsettling backdrop of a string of disappearances, with local women vanishing without a trace. The film follows Josh Fadem as Joe, an unassuming office worker at an online periodical who becomes entangled in a conspiracy after witnessing a murder.
