THE STORY – Created by teachers, Dead Deer High follows a team of high school slam poets and their English teacher as they prepare for a national poetry competition one year after a tragedy changed their lives forever.
THE CAST – Zack Kozlow, Holden Goyette, Kyla Brown, Christian Cruz, Ayanna Berkshire, Joseph Bertót, Madelyn Grace, Aaron Cammack, Julia Prud’homme & Audrey Kennedy Kozlow
THE TEAM – Jo Rochelle (Director) & Joshua Roark (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 91 Minutes
“Dead Deer High” may be a small, independent feature, but it aspires to be something larger than its humble origins. Jo Rochelle’s latest feature aims to be what “Dead Poets Society” was for its time, appealing to Gen-Z’s angst in an educational environment constantly beset by unnecessary bloodshed. Instead, it’s a mawkish drama that would rather spell out what it wants to say than let viewers become enraptured by the film’s empty attempts to elicit an emotional response that unfold throughout its runtime.
There is an honesty hidden at the core of “Dead Deer High” as Rochelle and screenwriter Joshua Roark draw on their own experiences and frustrations as educators. It’s most likely why the character of Jack, or as his students call him, Mr. K, feels like the most fleshed out of the bunch. In the year since the death of a beloved student and slam poet, Mr. K, who witnessed his death, and others close to the student are still reeling from what happened. Mr. K’s eccentric nature only grows as he’s unable to even step back into the school, teaching from outside his classroom window. The members of the Dead Deer High slam poetry team are also in a tough spot, as team leader Stephaine (Kyla Brown) is having to keep Holden Goyette’s JT and Christian Cruz’s Kyle from tearing each other apart. They are all processing the tragedy in their own way, but for some, it’s only through the power of the art itself and the relationships these characters build that they can find a path to healing.
Rochelle’s attempt to maintain an incredibly naturalistic tone in her direction only results in an ensemble of stale performances that struggle equally to land both moments of humor and intensity. It doesn’t help that Roark’s screenplay is overwrought, forcing characters to engage in conversations that come across as completely inauthentic. “Dead Dear High” is a film of overbearing emotions, all but spelled out to the characters as performers’ monologues about every thought that pops into their minds. Whether it’s Mr. K’s lectures on what poetry should mean to his students or conversations about school shootings and mental health. Roark and Rochelle’s attempts to open a dialogue about the mindsets behind environments that either allow or condition gun violence come off as incredibly fatuous; it is more of a PSA than an actual character-driven conversation. It almost plays as a face, the way the comedy so jarringly stands out among the drama that is so desperate to elicit some sort of response.
Most of which is tied to the character of Bill (Aaron Cammack), Jack’s gun-obsessed brother, who can only help his sibling by pawning his father’s six-shooter to defend his students. The film’s self-seriousness only makes a character like this even more cartoonish and out of place. There’s no subtlety in “Dead Deer Height,” as moments like Mr. K staring into a mirror, imitating a gun with his hand at his temple, are among the corniest things to happen in a film about this subject matter. “Dead Deer High” places audiences in the point-of-view of the firearm as it is passed around from location to location, with characters looking straight into the barrel. It’s all but camera techniques masquerading as inspired when, instead, it’s nothing but puerile.
Even the drama surrounding the members of the slam poetry team defaults into some of the more tired tropes of indie dramas we’ve seen before. None of the slam poetry matches feel invigorating, except for the film’s finale, and by then it’s all too late. Rochelle’s intentions are pure, but her inability to rise above the screenplay and direct performances that are, at the very least, watchable leads to a film that struggles in everything it wishes to excel at.
