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| Kyla Brown as STEPHANIE, Christian Cruz as KYLE in DEAD DEER HIGH |
We've seen it as in documentary form, but with different angles. In 1998, Paul Devlin's SLAMNATION is credited as the first film that captures the energy of a slam poetry competition, focusing on the structure and mechanizations. In 2010, Jon Siskel directed LOUDER THAN A BOMB, a documentary that follow four teams as they prepare for a similar contest. Not long after, Daniel Lucchesi and Alex Ramseyer-Bache created WE ARE POETS (2012), featuring six British teenagers that come to slam on an American stage. And taking a more activist approach in 2018, Max Powers made DON'T BE NICE, which situates slam poetry as a tool of resistance. Each entry earned admiring reviews and may have inspired other writers to pick up the pen again or for the first time. Surprisingly, there have been few directors that attempt a narrative approach to the subject.
Looking to turn that tide is director Jo Rochelle and writer/producer Joshua Roark, middle school teachers and cinephiles that fell in love and decided to make movies together. In DEAD DEER HIGH, a slam poetry team tries to prepares for an upcoming competition while simultaneously grieving the loss of their star poet, Vok Taylor, tragically killed in a school shooting. Vok's girlfriend and team captain Stephanie (Kyla Brown) pours her grief into preparing for this competition as a tribute to Vok. But most of their rehearsal time feels more like a therapy session where she's forced to mediate between Kyle (Christian Cruz) and JT (Holden Goyette), who take their frustrations out on each other. Kyle lacks empathy for JT, the only one of their group who witnessed Vok's death firsthand. For JT, he's carrying guilt, shame, and self-loathing that causes him to lash against anyone who tries to care. Kyle interprets TJ's actions as apathetic.
The teens desperately need mentorship and support, but that's hard to find. Their normally inspirational teacher sponsor, Mr. K (Jack Kozlow), can barely function in his job, unable to enter his classroom where the shooting happened. He teaches through a window, trying to act normal while fighting off panic attacks. Grief counselor Rachel (Ayana Berkshire) isn't sure it's healthy for the speech team to devote so much time reciting poetry about their friend's death. And the principal Mr. Diaz (Joseph Peréz Bertót) comes across as goofy and obtuse.
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| [L-R] Holden Goyette as JT, Jack Kozlow as MR. K in DEAD DEER HIGH |
With high stakes, teen angst, and a contest to train for, the stage seems set for a winning combination, but the results lack authenticity. DEAD DEER HIGH tries to be both a celebration of youth poetry and a meditation on school‑shooting trauma, but by giving neither element the depth it deserves, the film ends up diluting both. Rochelle cites a desire to build her film upon the rich heritage of the now classic DEAD POET'S SOCIETY, where a teacher attempts to shake up the rigid boarding school Welton Academy by daring to inspire his students to love poetry. But the two films have major differences. For one, the teacher never became a focus of the story. Mr. Keating always remains enigmatic – a cool cat, but we never learn anything about his private life. The focus is on the students and the coming-of-age trope of learning to find your voice. In DEAD DEER HIGH, the students become the enigmatic ones. And by setting the film in the aftermath of a school shooting, you divide the viewer's attention on where their attention should rest.
There were elements that worked nicely. The poetry that the students recite feels authentic, complex, and electric. Their team poem, "I Point this Poem at You," goes through the six screams of grief, with each team member attempting to verbalize their complex feelings of loss, anger, and gratitude for the time they had with Vok. Each stanza begins with "I point this poem at you/ I pull the trigger," both acknowledging the power that words have and reminding listeners that their friend was killed by a gun. For me, the highlight poem is when JT shows up late to the the qualifiers but manages to help his teammates earn a spot by reciting Vok's poem, "I look down at my two hands/ and count all the teeth of the men I've eaten," pronouncing himself as a kaiju that refuses to be labeled by the people who discount him as a "backup plan young man."
JT also has the most fleshed out character development of the teens. After witnessing an act of seemingly random violence, he now disdains his mother's prayers and wonders if a Higher power is just watching from a distance, withholding any aid. His poetry skills are the strongest, but his anger keeps him sabotaging his place on the team. All we know about Kyle is that he likes sneakers, and Stephanie gets relegated to mediator and girlfriend. Jack Kozlow as Mr. K gives the strongest performance of the movie and manifests an authentic grief in his body. His strength as an actor is fortunate as he had to perform alongside the weakest parts of the film, when we meet his family members. We meet gun-loving brother Bill (Aaron Cammack) who brags that no shooting would take place if he was there, mom Cassie (Kristina Haddad) who believes eating and not being sad are the key, and wife, Sara (Audrey Kennedy Kozlow), with the emotional affect of a grownup mean girl. These characters come across as caricatures more than people, but, to be fair, these segments are written poorly. What may have been intended for humor works against any emotional capital Rochelle and Roark earned.
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| Kyla Brown as STEPHANIE, Christian Cruz as KYLE in DEAD DEER HIGH |
There's also an odd directorial choice where a gun that brother Bill gives Mr. K becomes a character in the film. Represented by a round camera lens that characters look at on occasion, the gun is an object we never see. But we are made aware of its presence and where it's looking. It turns that Mr. K has a complicated back story with guns, one that is never fully explored or resolved. Once again, this divides the viewer focus, creating a cognitive load with no payoff.
This gets at the heart of what may be the real issue behind why this film doesn't work. The best films about lived trauma arise due to lived experience, and the story told is the vehicle for exploring that trauma. But as far as I can tell, nothing in the press notes indicate that anyone on cast or crew has lived experiences in surviving a school shooting. Instead, the story arose out of a desire to celebrate poetry and its place in young adult self-awakening. So why bring a school shooting into it? What purpose does this serve? To be sure, school shooting are a tragic epidemic, and survivors and spectators need such stories to help us make sense of the madness. But this should never be handled as a tool to drive up the drama. At the very least, survivors of such events should have been brought as sensitivity editors or to assure authentic representation. Without lived experiences, you will only be able to imagine and play act the mental state of survivors. The authenticity isn't there to give conviction to the words.
Perhaps this competition needs no additional drama to make it meaningful. The documentaries worked because they captured the raw lives of teens. Every day, young people battle against the expectations of themselves, their families, their friends, and their schools. As TJ quotes, "I've got two hearts. One for the world that hates me and one for the world that loves me. And though I don't know which one keeps me alive, I'll roar until one of them bursts." The drama is already there in the true lives of teens.
Screening in its World Premiere during SXSW 2026 in the Narrative Spotlight section. See film details page for more information.
Final score: 2 out of 5
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