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. Dark Match’s 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.
