Andrew Neighill’s Death Wheel tells the story of four friends who gather for games like checkers, charades, and spinning a wheel that stops at words like “suction,” “heat,” “choke” and “impact.”
Those are manners of death, and the audience will see them all before the film is over. Death Wheel impressively takes us from a grounded scenario to several very unhinged ones, while acknowledging true events that feel too horrible to be real.
The film, which played Friday at the Amarillo International Film Festival, shifts through the perspectives of four people played by actors Christopher Thom Smith, David Cox, Mike Gonzales and Mandy Jones. They are trapped in a loop they can’t seem to escape, and the actors impressively improvised much of the film, playing out the loop with a wide, challenging range of approaches. Sometimes all the actors act as if their characters are very dumb, and other times like they’ve been through trauma and guilt they don’t know how to process.
At first they all seem kind of bonkers — which threatens to lower the stakes of the film. Do we really want to watch these weirdos hurt themselves?
But soon we learn, through clues that Neighill drops with impressive restraint, that their game is based on something painfully grounded in reality. Neighill and the actors are willing to go to extremes, and not to apologize or over-explain.
Interpreting Andrew Neighill’s Death Wheel
Perhaps the biggest clue is the toast the characters recite, again and again, as they get drunk to play the game. It references atrocities halfway around the world, and seems wildly insensitive, until we come to understand the friends’ surprisingly personal connection to the toast.
By the end of the film, it becomes apparent that they have traveled to a very hard place, and brought something back. Here we meet the film’s fifth actor, Garret Benson, who delivers a very brief but impactful performance.
Death Wheel, a Lubbock, Texas-based indie production, shared a Friday night horror block with Marginalia. As I wrote about that film, Death Wheel really is art. It works on the surface, if you like watching grim deaths. But it works at a much deeper level if you engage with the film and its curious hints, and maybe even Google a bit after — that is, if you aren’t lucky enough to have Neighill present for questions.
In a post-screening Q&A, he explained the very DIY, collaborative process of making Death Wheel. But he also listened to some audience interpretations, and gamely guided them along.
Death Wheel has been picked up for distribution by Blood Pact films and will be available for streaming on Paramount+ and other streamers soon.
You can read more about the Amarillo Film Festival here and read more of our festival coverage here.
Main image: A promotional image for Death Wheel, courtesy of Andrew Neighill.
