The Dust Factory

MOVIE #1,456 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.18.24 • VOLUME LX • It’s normal for a fantasy or fantastical film to be somewhat illogical, but this movie goes above and beyond the call of duty in that department. Whatever rules they try to establish for this purgatory-like place are quickly shattered and we end up in a world where anything goes and anything can happen, like getting sucked down into a netherworld by Venom tentacles to play hockey against a demented circus ringmaster turned goalie. Hayden Panettiere sheds real tears during that scene and I can't begin to think of what this was like to film…

I appreciate how insane the exponential descent into more and more convoluted nonsense is. It made my head hurt, sure, but rarely does cinema get this bad in such a steadily increasing way. The skinny:

Ryan is a young boy who, traumatized by the death of his father, has not spoken aloud or exercised his imagination since. While on a walk with a friend, Ryan falls from a bridge and apparently drowns. He finds himself in a parallel universe called the Dust Factory, which houses all humans who are on the verge of death, but have yet to die.

Can’t argue with that when the special FX are this good, though…


It all comes to a head with Ryan waking up in the lake. He can talk now. And Hayden Panettiere is there too (she had an aneurysm in real life). They have no recollection of knowing each other in Purgatoryville, but we see them start to reconnect before the credits roll. Speaking of traumatic brain injuries aka The Dust Factory’s target audience… (sorry)

It’s always nice to see Armin Mueller-Stahl, making his second appearance in a TRUE RANDOM selection in the last three installments. And the actor who played the mom was the main ‘love interest‘ in Nightmare 2 and she is married to writer-director Eric Small IRL whose only other film credit is a sci-fi flick called 10,000 released a decade later.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,455 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,457 ⫸

---

The Dust Factory is a 2004 film directed and written by Eric Small. This was released on October 15, 2004.