Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 6, 2013, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The casting of Henry Rollins as an age-old cannibal promises an angry bloodbath, but the surprise and delight of He Never Died is how much deadpan humor the star and the movie have to offer.
A world premiere at the current SXSW Film Festival, He Never Died is a terrific against-type showcase for Rollins, using his established persona and intimidating appearance to create automatic expectations that it then playfully subverts. In a city that is hinted to be New York but is unmistakably Canadian (the film was shot in Toronto), Rollins’ Jack is a loner who spends the great bulk of his time shut in his spare apartment, venturing out only sporadically for morning diner visits and the occasional bingo game. As we come to learn, he has a literal taste for people that has led him to withdraw from human contact; he evidently doesn’t want to hurt anyone, though we do get some aural cues that he’s been responsible for some serious suffering in the past. These days, he’s just as likely to quench his particular thirst via black-market blood packs—but if he’s threatened by nasty underworld types and has to resort to inflicting fatal damage on them—well, the fresh meat is always the best, after all.
The opening scenes efficiently establish both Jack’s taciturn manner and capability for superhuman aggression, as well as his own physical imperviousness, allowing writer/director Jason Krawczyk to quickly begin easing us into the plot. It turns out Jack has been with at least one woman in his past, however likely brief that coupling was, and he reluctantly allows their now-teenage daughter Andrea (Jordan Todosey) back into his life. As bubbly and outgoing—but never obnoxiously so, thanks to Todosey’s winning performance—as Jack is withdrawn, Andrea provides a fun contrast to his antisocial tendencies and brings a little light into his life—if only he could appreciate it.
His concern for her does wind up motivating the central narrative once some criminal types from his past re-enter his life, which also leads Jack to further connect with diner waitress Cara (Kate Greenhouse from the superior, underseen The Dark Hours), with whom he has become quietly smitten. Amidst the escalating bloodshed, their relationship gives He Never Died its more quietly affecting center, and though both are hesitant about pursuing it, there’s strong chemistry between Rollins and Greenhouse. It is through their byplay that we come to learn a little more about Jack’s past, even as his exact nature is left teasingly vague (an intriguing visual clue appears in his first scene).
The violence in He Never Died is frequently handled in an offhanded manner reflecting Jack’s disaffection with the actual act of killing, though Krawczyk doesn’t shy away from the gory details in numerous instances. He and Rollins also elicit black laughs from Jack’s business-as-usual soldiering on even when sporting wounds that would put down any normal person. Beyond a few animalistic howls letting out whatever beast is dwelling inside him, Jack keeps his emotions in check throughout, and it is to Rollins’ credit that he makes such a closed-off character compelling, empathetic, funny despite himself and, in the end, more human than he probably knows.
I do wish the movie’s storyline was as creative as the way it has been populated and detailed; the basics of the plot are familiar from many other solitary-man-in-the-bad-city crime dramas, and there aren’t many surprises in the way it develops. What makes He Never Died distinctive, above all, is the man at its center; plans are for Krawczyk, Rollins and co. to continue Jack’s adventures in a TV miniseries, and this writer, for one, would welcome its fruition.
