Five FrightFest Facts with Mickey Reece from ‘Every Heavy Thing’

Halloween night at FrightFest always hits differently, and this year one of the dark shining star features at the event belonged to Mickey Reece. The Oklahoma auteur, known for his idiosyncratic brand of lo-fi surrealism, returned to the UK festival circuit with Every Heavy Thing, a vaporwave-tinged descent into paranoia, conspiracy and digital collapse. Set in the crumbling heart of “Hightown City”, the film follows Joe, an unassuming ad salesman who stumbles into a murder and finds himself unraveling amid vanishing women, flickering screens and the suffocating hum of modern life. It’s noir by way of the uncanny – satirical, hypnotic and unapologetically strange.

Reece, whose prolific output has earned him cult status across the genre scene, brings his signature absurdist wit to this tale of alienation and obsession, blending black comedy, split-screens and synth haze into a feverish reflection of surveillance-age anxiety. With Every Heavy Thing premiering on Halloween itself, Reece delivered a fittingly eerie treat for late-night audiences, a film that disorients as much as it delights, equal parts Blow-Up, Videodrome and Office Space filtered through his singular, deadpan lens.

In a special Halloween edition of our Five FrightFest Facts, Reece recalls the VHS spark that first set him on the path to filmmaking, shares his go-to October watch, and proposes an award category few festivals could claim with a straight face. And in typical Mickey Reece fashion, his answer to the “life as a horror film” question proves he’s still the reigning master of the surreal punchline.

Mickey Reece, writer-director of ‘Every Heavy Thing’

Tell us about your film

Every Heavy Thing is about Joe, an ad-seller for the last alt-weekly in the state, who unwillingly becomes entangled in conspiracy after witnessing a murder against a string of women’s disappearances in Hightown City. Told through vaporwave/digital art and split-screens, it plays with the idea of the “ordinary man pulled into extraordinary circumstances,” and the crumbling of normalcy under surveillance, media collapse, tech obsession and transactional lives.

How did you get into making movies?

I saw Trainspotting on VHS when I was 14 and felt the urge to recreate it with my parent’s camcorder in 1996.

What is your favourite film to watch at Halloween why?

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III because we find out more about the character. I remember the hype when it was released and fans finally realized that Leatherface CAN spell “food”.

If you could create your own award to give at FrightFest, what would it be and why?

I’m surprised FrightFest doesn’t have an award for ‘Best Use of Ball’ like the majority of genre festivals in the states. It recognizes exceptional creative, narrative, or technical achievement through the presence or depiction of a ball. It typically highlights both the artistry and discipline required to integrate a live ball or ball motif into filmic narrative structure. My dog looks forward to this award every year and sometimes calls bullshit if she feels the recipient is a controversial or politically motivated choice.

If your life was made into a horror film, set on All Hallows Eve, what would it be called and who would play the starring role?

It would be called Halloween directed by John Carpenter. The year is 1963, the night: Halloween. Police are called to 43 Lampkin Ln. only to discover that 15-year-old Judith Myers has been stabbed to death by her 6-year-old brother, Michael. After being institutionalized for 15 years, Myers breaks out on the night before Halloween. No one knows, nor wants to find out, what will happen on October 31st 1978, besides Myers’ psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis. He knows Michael is coming back to Haddonfield, but by the time the town realizes it, it’ll be too late for many people. It would star Jamie Lee Curtis.