The Next Generation of Found Footage

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MOVIE REVIEW
Deadstream
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Genre: Comedy, Horror
Year Released: 2022
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director(s): Joseph Winter, Vanessa Winter
Writer(s): Vanessa Winter, Joseph Winter
Cast: Joseph Winter, Melanie Stone, Jason K. Wixom, Pat Barnett, Marty Collins
Where To Watch: Streaming exclusively on Shudder on October 20, 2022

RAVING REVIEW: A horror film that tries to add in some comedic spice sporadically. The definitive modern-day found footage flick.

On the plus side, this was some awesome dumb fun. I can’t imagine many walking away, upset that they watched it. I also can’t imagine many walking away and wanting to revisit it anytime soon. In general, the film takes the found footage genre to the next level by adding in the spice of the live stream aspect. This isn’t the first to do so; earlier this year, we got DASHCAM, which was similar but lightyears different due to its tone.

I thought the general idea of the film had a lot of potential ideas, kind of a parody of the famous ghost-hunting shows that now litter a lot of streaming services. It fails because it doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or a horror. While there have been a lot of successful horror/comedies in the past, they can strike a good balance between the two that feed off each other.

When the movie took itself seriously, it was an interesting commentary on today’s obsession with online personalities. When it went down the comedy rabbit hole, it fell too far and had difficulty crawling back out. As I’ve mentioned countless times before, you have to work within your means, and when it comes to horror elements, they become unintentionally funny too often.

I would’ve liked to see the same film without “seeing” anything. Ultimately I caught myself laughing at things I didn’t think I was meant to. This plagues a lot of movies in the present day, even bigger budget feature films. Even in SMILE, probably one of my favorite horror films of the year, there were things that I thought would’ve been so much more “scary” if I had never seen them. This may partially be a problem with me and that I’m numb to horror in movies in general.

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