Every Heavy Thing

Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing drops you into Hightown City with the kind of retro-tinged unease that feels like it was pulled from a forgotten VHS shelf and dusted off to tell a modern paranoia story. It feels like going back to the past is the “test” for success.

In Hightown City, a string of young women has gone missing, but that’s beside the point. Our story is about Joe (Josh Fadem), an ad salesman for the last surviving alt-weekly in town. He lives a pretty humdrum life with his girlfriend Lux (Tipper Newton). Life couldn’t be much simpler.

One evening, his co-worker begs Joe to go with him to a local club to hear his new favorite singer, Whitney Bluewill (Barbara Crampton). She has a fantastic set. After the concert, Joe sees her hanging outside the venue. As Joe praises her show, her brains are instantly blown out. When Joe runs to his car, William Shaffer (James Urbaniak) points a gun at his head from the back seat. He is responsible for all the missing girls in Hightown City.

Shaffer tells Joe he wants to run a little test on Joe. He will let Joe live on the condition that he tells no one. If at any time Joe tells someone about him, Shaffer will kill him, as he’s always listening. Here’s the experiment. Now that Joe knows who the serial killer is, how will Joe live his “normal” life carrying this horrific secret? In fact, when Joe goes home, he’s despondent, and his girlfriend, Lux, suspects he knows about her secret affair.

Making matters worse, at work, Joe is teamed up with newly hired columnist Cheyenne (Kaylene Snarsky) to speak with an informant. The informant was a victim who escaped the killer and identified the killer as Shaffer. When they leave, Joe tells Cheyenne not to publish Shaffer’s name and tries to suppress details from her story to protect his own survival.

William Shaffer (James Urbaniak) watches from the shadows in Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing (2025).

“Now that Joe knows who the serial killer is, how will Joe live his ‘normal’ life carrying this horrific secret?”

Here’s why writer/director Mickey Reece’s Every Heavy Thing is an incredible story. He found an incredible, unique take on the serial-killer story and went on a deep dive. Joe is your average…well, Joe. There’s absolutely nothing special about him, and now he’s being placed in an impossible situation. He’s skittish around friends and family and is now forced to compromise his morals to live another day. There are consequences to his actions. And Shaffer, through a technology he created, observes every moment; worse, he seems to have a direct connection to his subconscious, manipulating his dreams and reality.

Every Heavy Thing also has an 80s/90s video style that works perfectly with this modern tale. It feels like Shaffer is using old VCR technology to peer into Joe’s mind. The film’s soundtrack is 80s synth music, and it appears that the entire film went through extensive ADR to give the dialogue a clean yet fat sound.

The film has everything I want in this retro thriller. First, the film opens with some incredible nudity…80s. It’s gratuitous and downright glorious. Then we’re introduced to our cast of characters. Josh Fadem is perfect as Joe. He’s the baseline character, and the film’s ups and downs are entirely in sync with him. Tipper Newton is amazing as Lux, the sort of moral center to Joe, but with a secret. Lastly, the great James Urbaniak is downright insanely sinister as the killer or mastermind Shaffer.

Reece takes the familiar serial-killer story and makes it personal, turning Joe’s panic into the engine of the ride that is Every Heavy Thing. You’ll be left with a sticky unease as the VHS tape you’ve just seen reaches its end and rewinds automatically, only to start over again. Nobody gets to be normal again.