The film about the INXS frontman follows Surviving R Kelly and Leaving Neverland in upping the stakes considerably
What killed Michael Hutchence? Mystify: Michael Hutchence brings new information to light. According to then-girlfriend Helena Christensen, in 1992 the INXS frontman got into an altercation with a taxi driver which led to him falling and hitting his head. She remembers him lying unconscious in the street with blood coming out of his mouth and ear. Hutchence woke up in hospital angry and confused, and refused to be treated. After that, friends say, he was never quite the same: he became aggressive, erratic and “seemed to crave more danger”. His death, five years later, was ruled to be suicide by hanging but, Mystify reveals, the autopsy revealed large areas of brain damage.
Perhaps the desire to come up with such a revelation is particularly understandable in the case of Hutchence, whose death was alleged by his then-partner Paula Yates to be the result of autoerotic asphyxiation. The theory has been widely contested, but once established, such associations are very hard to overwrite. Mystify, directed by longtime INXS collaborator Richard Lowenstein, could be seen as an attempt to do that.