Deathgasm II: Goremageddon (2025) Review

It’s a long while since Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) survived the events of the first Deathgasm movie but he hasn’t progressed a whole lot since. He’s struggling to hold on to any kind of long-term employment, Medina (Kimberly Crossman) is no longer his girlfriend, is no longer in the band and – worst of all – Brodie’s guitar is repossessed. What’s a guy to do? Get back his mojo by resurrecting Deathgasm and winning Noizequest, a local Battle Of The Bands, that’s what. Okay, so some of his previous bandmates are dead, but that’s not a problem. It’s time to invoke the spirits once more and to hell with the consequences…

Ten years on from its predecessor, the fact that crowd funding brought Deathgasm II: Goremageddon into being indicates that there was still an appetite to catch up with Brodie and his continuing quest to become a Rock God. This time, Brodie has to play the Dark Hymn in order to revive Zakk (James Joshua Blake) and Dion (Sam Berkley) and, the pair has to munch their way through a stack of folks Brodie hopes won’t be missed in order to become more human and hence restore their musical skills.

If you enjoyed the first movie and can get your head around the fact that the main characters are still behaving almost exactly as they were when they were teenagers, then you’ll get the most mileage out of this sequel. As is customary for a metal horror movie, everything about this is turned up to eleven. There’s wall to wall gore, bodily fluids of every type are sprayed around, the humour is often puerile, occasionally inspired, occasionally offensive. In short, it’s a lot. It rarely lets up and by the closing credits you’ll either feel exhilarated or bludgeoned. I was leaning towards the latter but I can’t deny that the sheer volume of effects work is impressive, particularly during an utterly deranged sequence in which Dion finds himself in a roomful of glory holes. Don’t ask.

It’s to Cawthorne’s credit that he manages to make the whining, self-pitying Brodie somewhere in the vicinity of sympathetic, considering the dreadful way he treats those around him, living or undead. In the previous movie, Milo was misunderstood. Now, unfortunately, he seems a bit of a dick. It’s up to Daniel Cresswell, as Milo’s only friend Giles, to bring the bulk of the laughs, although his bullying of Dion isn’t quite the source of fun it attempts to be, despite this triggering a second half, ramshackle revenge plot for the put upon keyboard player.

Crossman, meanwhile, is relegated to the background for a chunk of the film, now part of a “heartcore” band fronted by the cod philosophy spouting Jesse Dead (Kieran Charnock), who views himself as an unappreciated musical genius and won’t take any kind of advice, especially from Medina or fellow band member Ana (Maggie Nicole Robertson). Whereas these interludes hint at satirising the musical genre, they end up as an odd combination of underwritten female roles and Jesse being a performatively sensitive but tedious type who is just asking to be vanquished by the forces of good old fashioned death metal.

That said, the script contains its fair share of zingers along the way but the humour is constantly veering between fairly sweet and astonishingly mean spirited and it’s often difficult to reconcile the two contrasting approaches. Goremageddon is at its best when it’s pointing out the inherent absurdity of zombie movies and channelling the spirit of Kiwi low budget classics such as Bad Taste rather than pushing the envelope in search of more edgy would be chuckles. The running gag about not being able to use the name of a certain role playing game due to licensing costs is highly amusing, as is Zakk’s decision to become vegan. More of that would have been welcome.

There’s a feeling that Deathgasm II’s mission is to throw everything possible at the wall and see what splats. While that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, the overall effect is more akin to a series of sketches that just about cohere into an overall movie. The plentiful, practical effects are gloopy and fun, the performances are energetic and the Trivium references are brilliant but there’s something that ultimately doesn’t quite work, especially when compared to the original. However, I know that there’s a lot of folks out there who will lap this up.

Movie Rating:

Deathgasm II: Goremageddon trailer