The swinging extremes of online dating and fleeting relationships forged therein find their articulation in Elric Kane’s erotic horror-thriller, “The Dead Thing” (2025). A Shudder title, it goes without saying there are way too many beats of the film you can spot from a mile. Even then, it’s difficult to deny the film has some inspired, fervid streaks of gut-wrenching authenticity in the ways it registers the seeming irrevocableness of being stuck in a toxic relationship. Nothing seems possible, you are wholly shut in. The film understands and underscores this bleakness with forceful conviction to some degree.
Kane also displays certain stylistic fractures wherein the narrative fragments through elisions and vital details trickle in through passing suggestions. As the woman trapped in an abusive relationship, Blu Hunt playing the lead is terrific, anchoring the film in a shifting, disconcerting, and unpredictable assemblage of emotional registers. There’s a tough impassiveness her presence absorbs until it gradually reveals reserves of vulnerability, a desperate craving for neediness and touch that pushes her character down a terrible path.
The Dead Thing (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
What’s striking about the film is its subtle emphasis on tracing an internal journey with the emotional scars of loneliness we internalize, inflicting in turn deeper wounds on ourselves unwittingly, and inadvertently. It’s a ruthless loop, punishing and scathing, holding no mercy at all. When we enter the film, Alex (Blu Hunt) is on a series of online dates. She goes through a string of hook-ups. The faces change but there’s no definitive emotional experience with any. It’s an empty procession of sexual intimacy removed from continued investment, a need to follow up.
The film sticks to Alex’s perspective; her internal life, though, remains a mystery. The makers shroud it, her key decisions that aren’t exactly kind or ideal. Hunt plays it furthermore compellingly, keeping up a strong sense of enigma. There’s a fascinating inscrutability to Alex. We follow her through a slew of dates, set up in the early sections of the film.
Neither is she a person who reveals at all to her roommate. Nor does she seem to have a social life. Her family is distant. Suddenly, her life leaps back into a semblance of meaning and anticipation when she swipes right on Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen) on a dating app, Friktion. With him, she feels thrillingly connected. They spend a wonderful night together, each taking sketches of the other. When they part the next morning, there’s a promise of further encounters.
At work, her colleague tries to make a pass at her. But she recoils. She sees no sexual or romantic interest in him. The prospect of Kyle now excites her. However, strangely, no longer does he respond to her messages. A note she leaves for him at his workplace goes unattended. There’s no word whatsoever on him.
Why doesn’t Kyle respond to Alex’s messages?
She’s in for a shock when she sees Kyle going out with another girl. Later, the barista at Kyle’s work informs her that Kyle had passed away in an accident. Alex goes to the spot of the accident, with his earphones lying on the curb. She even goes to see the girl she’d seen Kyle with. She tries to ask her but retreats before the probing can get deeper. Desperate to meet him again, she creates a new account and mysteriously matches with him again. The same situation of the date recurs. The exact bent of the conversation takes shape. He tells her he doesn’t remember meeting her earlier. She discloses to him the story of the accident. He sees the reflection of his mutilated body and gets shocked. Alex’s colleague also disappears presumably after being frightened of Alex’s ghost or he might have just been killed off by Alex.
Kyle is in denial of accepting his death. He goes through dates, refusing to accept that he’s a spirit passing through the mortal world. He keeps returning to Alex’s side. Quickly the relationship between the two hurtles towards toxicity. She struggles to sever herself from it, while he forces himself into it. He is deeply, increasingly envious of her being alive, while he is stuck in a loop. She drifts further and further away from him, her attraction to him dimming. Kyle ends up killing Alex’s roommate, Kara.
Kyle makes a great show of forgiving Alex when she needs none, for being in a relationship with Kara’s partner. She tells him she wants him gone, that he is stifling her. He retreats and vanishes. Relieved, she heads back to work. She decides to accompany her new colleague, Chris, with whom she enjoys a good rapport, to a holiday. Everything seems to be going fine until, of course, things go south. The cocktail of curdled envy and spite that tails Alex follows her to the hotel.
The Dead Thing (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Is Alex able to free herself of Kyle?
The occasion of good cheer and bliss is disrupted by the reappearance of Kyle. It was only a matter of time before he showed up acting to re-possess Alex. When Alex emerges from the bathroom, she finds Chris acting all weird. It strikes her that it’s actually Kyle in Chris’ body. The climax is full of frenzy and scuffles, as Alex tries to reason with Kyle for the umpteenth time that he cannot control her and call it love. He is still unable to comprehend or fathom. He doesn’t let her go and throttles her. She attempts to free herself of his clutch but ultimately succumbs and dies of asphyxiation.
The final scene of the film ends on a tragic note with Alex’s spirit now in place of Kyle, doing what he was doing, going on dates, and cut off from a calm acceptance of her reality. She sees her morbid reflection and resumes the conversation on the date. Things can only go awry from this point yet again and we leave the film with a knot within.
