Kyle Coffman | Groomsday / 2022

bad blood and mayhem

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kyle Coffman (screenwriter and director) Groomsday / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

I can’t quite imagine for whom this rather gruesome and sad film was really created or for what purpose.

    It begins after a couple, just married, have been severely beaten, the one, Connor (Dylan LaRay) awakening to find his partner Landon (Trystan Colburn) apparently dead. He struggles to go over to him and holds his head as he desperately calls out to him to come back to life.

    Unfortunately, their faces look as if ketchup were dripped upon them with dabs of mustard, making them appear very much like Heath Ledger’s version The Joker in the Batman series. Moreover, the movie falls into a predictable gear recounting their couple’s relationship from their first meeting, what was to have been a one-night stand, to their increasing comfort about being together, a bath in which their share their worst secrets (Connor had sex with his sister’s college boyfriend; Landon, working in the gym locker room was anally raped with a plunger by a couple of the school Lacrosse team members), and Connor’s disastrous attempt to make lasagna which ends with a Post-It note attached to Landon’s family recipe asking Connor to marry him.

    At least they’re not running down a beach, or swinging hands in the park. But, although the stories they tell are fairly fascinating they too are fairly dramatic and, in the one case, gory, suggesting that being gay just isn’t a lot of fun. Moreover, Coffman not only needs a better make-up artist, but a sound artist, since it’s terrible hard to hear the tales they tell. I had to listen to them at least three times to catch the drift of what they were conveying.

     But then we again return to the scene of the crime where Langdon lies either dead or dying, and for a few moments I was afraid that this gay film had repeated all the crimes against being queer that Hollywood had over the years, making sure that gay men were punished, in the case, for daring to marry. They are punished, in fact, but a stranger, happening to walk down this out-of-the-way spot just happens to have once worked as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and somehow, soon after, Landon comes back to life.

     Still, what happened to this couple on their wedding day certainly doesn’t bode well for the rest of their marriage. If nothing else, we can say that Landon hasn’t been very lucky regard to the heterosexual world in young life.

      But that still returns us to my original question: for whom is this movie intended. Are gay men being warned to the dangers of homophobia? Is Coffman suggesting that if gays get married perhaps it’s best for them not to walk down a dark street wearing matching shiny blue suits? Was the director hoping for us to make the connection between blood-stained faces and left-over tomato sauce that the boys never used on the limp lasagna noodles?

      I have to say, I’m not a fan of gay horror movies. I feel the entire LGBTQ community has put up with enough bad blood and mayhem without needing to shed more or create it themselves.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).