[Film Review] DeadStream (2022)

Disgraced social media personality and vlogger Shawn Ruddy attempts to face his fear of ghosts and return to his former glory by live streaming himself spending the night in an infamous haunted manor house. After accidentally awakening the evil spirit that inhabits the house, Shawn’s livestream begins to document to thousands of viewers his fight for survival.

Continuing on the recent fashion of annoying social media stars finding themselves in terrifying predicaments, DeadStream directed by Joseph and Vannessa Winter follows whimpering Shawn as he attempts to win back followers and sponsors, after a controversial episode of his web series had basically left him tarred and feathered. Making sure that he is not tempted by an early escape by vandalising his own car and locking the manor house entryway behind him, Shawn begins to explore whilst setting up equipment. As the live streamer inspects each room, he relays the story of the owner of the house, a jilted poet who had committed suicide on the stairwell, who seems to be the very angry spirit that Shawn inadvertently releases.

With a major influence of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), Deadstream is a fun and light-hearted horror that utilises found footage expertly, bringing the medium into the social media era in an extremely believable way. The protagonist Shawn is certainly irritating, demonstrating perhaps the filmmaker’s opinions on social media stars and vlogger personalities. However, the character is not as off putting and enraging as other recent livestream found footage-based horror film characters, and so whilst as a viewer, one may not necessarily empathise with Shawn, an audience can absolutely enjoy the ghost train ride the central character brings us on.

One of the aspects of Deadstream that makes it such an enjoyable experience is the level of gore. Borderline ridiculous, however the gross out scenes are laugh out loud and invokes an eye watering visceral reaction that only adds to the fun of the film. The jump scares are predictable but due to a slightly comedic delivery, do not feel tired or ineffective and due to the livestream point of view camera work, are genuinely successful.

Whilst Deadstream may not be ground-breaking or imbued with deeper themes and morality messages, this is exactly what makes it such a fun and enjoyable film. Continuing on the tradition of the William Castle horror movie sensibility of bringing audiences on a ghost ride, Deadstream is a fantastic movie just in time for spooky season when audiences are looking for a supernatural and gory entertaining addition to their Halloween watch roster.

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