Photo: Supplied
If you’re a fan of movie podcasts, you’ll know the name Elric Kane. Along with Brian Saur, the NZ-raised, L.A.-based cinephile has been hosting the Pure Cinema Podcast since 2017, a weekly show affiliated with Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema. Tarantino has guested several times.
Kane has enjoyed some success in this area, hosting the Fangoria magazine pod Colors of the Dark with Rebekah McKendry for the past ten years, and prior to that This Week in Horror, which he started in 2010.
He broke into this industry at a time he describes as “before the bubble”, having found work as a producer at a podcast network not long after moving back to America from New Zealand.
Born in New York, Kane’s father passed away when he was four years old, and his mother, originally from Reporoa, Waikato, decided to move back home. They spent a few years on her family farm before relocating to Wellington for around 20 years.
Kane harboured dreams of being a filmmaker, so he enlisted at a film school in Savannah, Georgia. He credits the choice to the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, thinking at the time “I want to live in a weird place like that”.
After that came a move to L.A. and his podcasting career, about which Kane says “You’re living somebody’s dream, but it might not be your own dream”. He made a few trips back to NZ to make some “no-budget” movies, but The Dead Thing, which just premiered on the Shudder streaming service, is his debut American production.
He’s been touring with the movie in America, hosting 35mm screenings at the IFC Centre in New York, and the New Beverly Cinema. He said the experience of playing the film there would only come second “if the Paramount was still there in Wellington and I was going back to show it there”.
The movie connects the supernatural with modern technology, specifically online dating. Kane says the thinking was “let’s tackle what we’re going through. Let’s not shy away from phones, let’s make that the centrepoint of where the horror is coming from. It’s a self-reflection horror, the Black Mirror kind of version.”
With such extensive film knowledge, Kane knew he had to work within a small budget, but also knew what he wanted to make. “I love movies that are super focused on character. In this one, Blu Hunt is on screen almost every second of the movie, and her face is a big part of the film, watching her inner life”.
He stresses horror is just part of the equation, describing it as part-arthouse drama as well as urban legend, and citing directors Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieślowski as influences.
Asked about his personal experience with online dating, Kane says “I did meet my partner on the internet, but not internet dating, thank god.
“I was working in an office, and the secretary was funny as hell. She would come in every day and tell me these stories about her previous night’s internet dates, and the amount of different types of sites: one where you meet for a bagel, on where you meet for an Uber ride just for the ride.
“The sheer variety of ways you’re spending your time to make a connection, and not really connecting in the process. It started to feel pretty bleak, even though her stories weren’t. And so I made a note: ‘Dating app horror?’”
The Dead Thing is currently streaming on Shudder.
