Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Deadstream’ on Shudder, an Amusing Found-Footage Freakout About an Loathsome Internet Prankster Being Tortured By Ghouls

”Found footage” are two words that inspire not-in-a-good-way chills and revulsion in horror-movie circles, but Deadstream (now on Shudder) begs us to reconsider. Joseph Winter co-directs himself as a YouTube obnoxio-prankster who vows to face his fears by spending the night inside an abandoned home notorious for its supernatural activity – and filming it all himself, of course. The question isn’t whether the movie tortures the annoying influencer; it’s whether the annoying influencer is tortured ENOUGH to satisfy our lust for such things.

DEADSTREAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “I’m Shawn Ruddy, and I’m a piece of trash!” No need to call the Truth in Advertising Dept. on Shawn (Winter): He’s a please-like-and-subscribe internet dickhead who films himself doing all manner of shameless things at the expense of his own dignity, e.g., dogsledding in his briefs, being smuggled over the border, effing with cops, etc. A scandal derailed his shenanigans, and even though we’re never quite clued in to what happened, we aren’t at all surprised that he had to publicly apologize, contend with accusations of being racist and see his teeth-on-tinfoil livelihood derailed.

Now, after six months of digital exile, Shawn is trying to win back his sponsors with a new stunt: livestreaming himself spending the night in a haunted house in the middle of a wooded rural-Utah nowhere. To ensure he doesn’t R-U-N-N-O-F-T, he pulls the sparkplugs from his car and chucks them into a ravine, and padlocks the door and drops the key into the furnace vent. Thunder rumbles above like the stomach of an unseen monster that’s starved for SOOOOOOULLLLLS. He has POV and selfie cams and he sets up remote cams in all the rooms and all the while, like every YouTuber that ever existed, he never, ever shuts the f— up. Ever. Constant commentary. Chatter chatter chatter. Yakkity yak-yakking as if drunk on the sound of his own nasally bray.

So I’m sure I speak for many of us when I say: Let’s go whatever demonic supernatural entity lurks within this dump! Eat him up, eat him up, rah rah rah! Exercise a little poetic irony by ripping out his vocal cords and making a delectable fricassee out of them! Our hateable jackass quasi-protagonist tells us the story of the house’s former resident, a poet-girl who hanged herself and got the ball rolling on a series of awful happenings, including murder and dead babies and stuff. He finds some of her poems and criticizes them: “They don’t even rhyme.” Occasionally, things thump or crash in the house, or we hear a creaky hinge, and he shrieks like a harpooned rabbit. He often consults the live chat for advice, especially when shit gets really freaky and intense. Two questions: Will he survive this? And why is his wifi signal so damn strong? (Actually, don’t ask that second one.)

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Deadstream is The Blair Witch Project (pause for dramatic effect) FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGE! It’s Paranormal Activity (pause for dramatic effect) BUT FOR YOUTUBE! It’s [REC] (pause for dramatic effect) IF SAM RAIMI DIRECTED IT!

Performance Worth Watching: Winter is so convincing as the vexatious YouTuber character narrating what may very well be his own demise, that you can’t wait to taste the delicious schadenfreude of his misery.

Memorable Dialogue: “I have the internet! There’s a lot of nice people on the internet that like to help!” – Shawn may or may not be aware of the deeply hilarious irony of this statement, it’s hard to tell

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Shawn really is a creep, and I’m not saying he deserves to die, although maybe I kinda am, because in the context of watching horror movies, especially horror-comedies that insist on not being taken too seriously, you tend to suspend your empathy along with your disbelief. Therein lies the rub of Deadstream – we have to hang out with this will-say-anything-for-a-hate-click ultraschmuck for the entire movie, which is a dicey way to spend 90 minutes, but the potential payoff is too tasty for us to turn away. And without giving away what happens, I will say, at the very least, a ghoul snaps off a decrepit old nail in his nostril and leaves it there, a scene that just tickles the most tender of our hater-cockles.

Winter’s performance gives off some succulent Tom Green self-loathing vibes, and the story finds some traction in of-the-moment late-capitalism cancel-culture commentary, making it about more than just what Winter-the-filmmaker, along with life/writing/directing partner Vanessa Winter, can bring to the ol’ jump-scare flick. There’s true comedy in Winter’s characterization of Shawn, who’s a skittery scaredy-cat constantly being roasted by the scrolling comments section – and the zombie-whatevers he finds in the house, who have quite the sense of humor themselves. They’re not content to just go boo, or try to communicate some obscure message, or stick a knife in his eyeball; no, they’re in it for some long-haul torment, as if they spent enough time in front of his idiotic show to foster a serious dislike for this guy and all the moronic blither that spews from his cakehole.

So this is a relatively fresh, amusing take on two well-worn horror subgenres – haunted house and found footage – complete with a no-CGI rule and plenty of ick exploding in Shawn’s face. Deadstream adheres to some old tropes, e.g., introducing things like crusty hypodermic needles and a rusty meat cleaver for foreshadowing’s sake, or having our protagonist discover an old clown doll to give us the creeps. But the clown gives Shawn the opportunity to spew pinheaded internet-era drivel – “Should I be offended that clowns always wear whiteface?” – affirming who the truly ugly people in this movie are. And it ain’t the ones with the pallid, decaying skin and eyeballs bulging from their sockets.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Deadstream offers a clever visual concept, a healthy number of laughs and just enough social critique to feed our need to see this guy bleed.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.