Every Heavy Thing

Women are disappearing in Hightown City and nobody has much of an idea what to do. At the same time the city that has been earmarked for a tech makeover with the behemoths of the industry set to pump money into it.

Joe (Josh Fadem) works at the Metro Weekly (one of the few print periodicals left) selling advertising. There’s not much in the way of journalism for him but he does gets to a gig occasionally. At one he witnesses a murder and then has a conversation with the killer, who in a distorted voice challenges) him to keep his mouth shut or he’ll know and be dead in an hour.

The pressure on Joe is almost immediate. His partner Lux (Tipper Newton) senses something is up. And at work a new journalist Cheyenne (Kaylene Snarsky) is intent on investigating the murders through a tip and a contact she is keen to follow up on, and whom Joe sets about discrediting.

Lux too has her secrets, while cajoling Joe to give up his, it being so obvious that he is suffering. Bad dreams and digital nightmares plague Joe as he struggles to keep control of his mind, if indeed he still has control after an interaction with tech mogul William Shaffer (James Urbaniak).

Every Heavy Thing has a very 70’s look about it with the split screens and the general tone and hue of the film. Writer and director Mickey Reece however is right up to date tackling headlong the matter to the ever-advancing tech into society, and that some just aren’t going to keep up, while those in control carry on regardless of those discarded on the way. Reece has provided plenty of food for thought.

But those big issues don’t get in the way of a clever, at times funny, trippy techno thriller built on the basest of attitudes like misogyny and the abuse of position whether it be a super-rich tech magnate or the editor of the magazine, or indeed Joe himself.

The humour in the main quite subtle around interpreting the expressions on peoples faces and their actions. There are other more in your face such as Joe’s veteran father and his love of guns.

Every Heavy Thing had its UK premiere at FrightFest Halloween 2025.