The concept of a cultural object as “Marmite” – ie you’ll either love it or hate it – is an overused one but may come into play here. Rite Here Rite Now is essentially a rock concert film, showcasing the Swedish theatrical rock band Ghost, and it’s exactly the sort of on-the-face-of-it loud and wacky business that people like to describe as a Marmite movie – but the truth is that at its core, it’s a pretty tame film, which fits the band’s goofy brand of soft metal.
Rock bands have a long history of dubious antics in their capacity as professional provocateurs, but Ghost’s major controversy is not especially rock’n’roll: it’s a legal dispute as to whether the masked “Nameless Ghouls” who make up the majority of the band qualify as band members or session musicians. The most daring (and genuinely rather tasteless) moment in the film comes courtesy of the closing credits – a montage of various famous serial killers might feel par for the course in metal-land, but the inclusion of other imagery such as the haunting image of nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc in the Pulitzer prize–winning photograph The Terror of War is an odd choice tonally.
