Metal Lords (2022)

A Netflix original from the pen of D. B. Weiss, which is itself a small cultural artifact worth contemplating. Two teenage metalheads, Hunter and Kevin, scheme to win a high school Battle of the Bands, and the film ambles toward that goal with the easygoing stride of a picture that knows it will be watched on a couch. Peter Sollett directs with warmth and no particular urgency. The humor is gentle, the stakes are low, and the whole enterprise radiates the mild decency of a streaming catalog filler that somehow turned out better than it needed to be.

The cast is quietly multiethnic without ever announcing itself, which is either admirable restraint or simply a reflection that the filmmakers had no thesis to advance. Isis Hainsworth plays Emily, a Scottish cellist who converts to goth metal and earns her spot through competence, not decree. Her arc is genuinely her own. Yet the screenplay cannot resist the tired Yoko Ono framing, casting her as the woman who threatens the sacred bond between two boys. The film gestures at something more interesting and then retreats to the familiar. There is no queerness here, no environmental sermon, no class critique, no body-image discourse. A stepfather's stolen credit card funds the gear, and the film treats this as teenage mischief, which it is.

Kevin reads as an introvert; Emily has sensory struggles and public meltdowns. The film observes these traits without ever naming them, and that reticence is arguably its wisest choice. Nothing is lectured. The messages arrive through camaraderie and a winning final performance, and the trio that emerges is inclusive in the offhand way that real friend groups are inclusive. A pleasant, minor, good-natured picture. The sommelier finds it drinkable.