The Dead Thing is a symbolic, yet slightly underwhelming, romance thriller about toxic relationships’ fatal-feeling effects. Alex (Blu Hunt), a lab office worker, dates many guys without much connection or pleasure. However, one match in Friction (Tinder without the copyright!) catches her eye: a barista named Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen) with a cat in his profile photo. The two meet, they hit it off, and spend their night chatting away while drawing black-and-orange portraits of each other. They screw around, fall asleep, and leave each other the next day with a simple “I like you” from Kyle as a parting grace. Encouraged by her memorable night, Alex texts Kyle to no response before realizing he’s a typical one-night stand sleaze. However, upon asking for him at the coffee shop he claims to work at, she’s faced with a memorial picture of him, detailing how Kyle died in a car wreck a few years prior. She re-matches with him on Friction to determine his identity, upon which he looks in the mirror and remembers the truth: Kyle’s a fearful, lustrous ghost who refuses to leave for the afterlife, as his disfigured body, bloodied face, and twisted facial structure reflect at him. In need of someone to tether him, he clings to Alex, who increasingly feels his grip tighten out of “love.” She must break away before she has nothing left to live for—as his jealousy drives him to paranormal murders.

Love is painful. Relationships, with or without love, can hurt. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. Once we discover a habit- or person-derived pattern and it becomes second nature—regardless of the harm it instills—it’s much harder to break away from. Toxic relationships sprawl for that reason, as they most often start dewy and joyful. Smarter manipulators reel partners in before trapping them. Kyle, with or without knowing it, does precisely that to Alex. “We don’t need to talk, do we?” Kyle asks Alex upon meeting her, easing Alex from posing as she does everywhere else. Thanks to director Elric Kane’s darkly wistful vision and a solid grasp of manipulative mindsets, Alex befalls the same fate many victims do: they’re convinced they can’t go elsewhere.

As Kyle and Alex further attach—or rather as Kyle grasps Alex tighter—one phrase arises and repeats: “You need me. You need me. Say you need me.” For a man who doesn’t say much, Kyle is direct in demanding to be needed. In the middle of sex, when at one’s most vulnerable, it’s hard to reject such demands without killing the mood. When the one demanding is dangerous, rejection is much more fatal, as Kyle demonstrates when he invisibly begins choking Alex out for not answering. It’s a typical tale for many in not-so-great situations with not-so-great parties in the mix. By issuing such commands and disregarding Alex’s needs while slowly disintegrating her life around her, Kyle fully possesses Alex’s person: “This is what we wanted. I have all of you, and you’ve got all of me,” Kyle mutters to the now terrified, friendless, and jobless woman he targeted. Alex can either get out or die, as Kyle leaves no in-between. Kane effectively demonstrates the highly stressful life of being in such possessive relationship harbors, from the early warning signs to the last blow.

Unfortunately, while there are plenty of subtexts Dead Thing delivers, it suffers from an unusual lack of basic technicalities. It’s not made clear how Kyle kept himself around beyond his fear for the “after’s” unknown. Alex is little defined beyond being a regular working person who has sex a lot (which she experiences zero pleasure from, and her motivations aren’t extrapolated). Neither Smith-Petersen nor Hunt is particularly convincing as the central duo, as they’re both primarily flat-faced and even-keeled; the best actors remain on the sidelines, like Alex’s more genuine love interest, Chris (John Karna). Massive changes wrought by Kyle’s murderous streak, like the absence of Alex’s only friend, go unnoticed. Much time gets spent with characters talking but not saying much. The ending is more confusing than cleverly cyclical as it wanted to be. It’s unusual that a film nails its symbolism before cracking its narrative, but Dead Thing can feel dead in the water when logistics get thought out. It’s still reasonably entertaining and heavily implicative, though, so for thriller fans, Shudder fans, and more intelligent blood-pump fans, The Dead Thing will probably provide more thoughtfulness than thoughtlessness.

Streaming on AMC+ and Shudder now