BITS '19 Film Review - DEAD DICKS

Becca (Jillian Harris) has just received the offer of a lifetime. Acceptance into a prestige graduate nursing program. However, her thoughts turn almost immediately to her mentally ill brother Ritchie (Heston Horwin) she has been his main support system for all of her life for her medicated brother. As she decides how she will tell Ritchie the news she goes to a shift at the bar where she works during which discovers multiple urgent voice mails to his apartment . Fearing the worst she cuts out of work running into Ritchie's downstairs neighbour Matt (Matt Keyes) a corporate looking busy body who's push up regime her brother is apparently disrupting.  Becca enters the apartment to find Ritchie hanging in the closet. Mortified she goes to take him down when she hears her brother's voice behind her explaining that this scenario has occurred before.

Based on an intriguingly original idea, the narrative of Dead Dicks continues to twist and turn at each moment the audience things they have things pegged. Writer directors Chris Bavota and Lee Paula Springer pack plenty into their limited budget one main set production. The mechanism that allows Dick to keep coming back is plain to see and understand  but the different developing mutations of the process range from grotesque to surprising the latter in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers -John Carpenter The Thing type of way.

The viewers see the story mainly from Jillian Harris as Becca's point of view. She has to talk Ritchie off the ledge, is the one to get eyes on the full regeneration process and frustrates when she is slow to get in position to witness the rebirth. She's also the one tasked to deal with the multiple Ritchie's. Heston Horwin work is more on the physical side as Ritchie. He's doing the body horror as he navigates the conflicting messages in his mind.

Dead Dicks is at its centre a relationship between a brother and sister. As anyone can relate that has a sibling the relationship can be frustrating at times to the point where time apart can be the best remedy. The writer-directors show in the piece that it is O.K. to admit that frustration even if you are the sibling that is supposed to be the stronger supportive one. The opening warning at the start of the film directing those that need help to get it as what follows could be triggering is thoughtful. The film is a crisp narrative by a pair of fresh voices. The momentum for the film deservedly continues to grow as does the anticipation for the duo's next project.

***1/2 Out of 4.

Dead Dicks | Chris Bavota / Lee Paula Springer | Canada | 2019 | 83 Minutes.

Tags: Skype, Nursing, Graduate School, Mental Illness, Depression, Caregiver, Voice Mail, Suicide Attempt, Portal, Rebirth, Suffocation, Hanging, Electrocution, Medication.