In short: Deadstream (2022)

Warning: there are spoilers forthcoming!

Deeply unlikable Internet “influencer” and insufferable man-child Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) whose shtick it is to livestream himself fighting his fears while whining a lot aims for a comeback after some past unpleasantness we’ll only learn details about much later. Clearly, the way back into the adulation of the public he believes he deserves is by streaming a night in a haunted house. While whining and fake-shuddering his way through the house, he acquires an unwanted sidekick in the form of a fan called Chrissy who suddenly pops up (Melanie Stone) in a way that’ll only convince an influencer nothing untoward is going on (that’s not a spoiler, surely), lets himself be goaded into an ill-advised ritual, and eventually proceeds to enrage the already rather nasty local main ghost into quite a bit of Evil Dead 2 like horror comedy business, though with a lower body count.

I didn’t enjoy Vanessa and Joseph Winter’s horror comedy quite as much as the rest of the Internet apparently did. Largely, that’s on account of my growing dislike for the “all influencers are horrible and fake” set-up I’ve seen too many horror movies use in the last half decade or so. It’s a bit too pat and too self-congratulatory a set-up, usually lacking nuance, and doesn’t get better by the number of films that simply repeat it. This also leads to films whose first half consists of deeply punchable asshats with one character trait doing little of interest, a problem we encounter here as well.

The first half of Deadstream is admittedly somewhat better paced than these things often are, but it still forces us to spend a lot of time with a single idiot doing little of interest. Shawn isn’t exactly a grower, either, or charming in his idiocy like Evil Dead’s Ash, so even once the film gets going in his second half, I can’t say I was ever on his side instead of the ghosts’.

To be fair, the tour de force parts of the film are typically fun enough to shift the focus from how little I enjoy spending time with its main character, and the pacing of the slightly weird horror comedy set pieces becomes downright great. Stone’s gleefully over the top full body performance is also quite the thing, providing the force Shawn fights with an appropriately extreme personality. There’s also some mirroring between her and Shawn’s motivation going on, but this mostly gets drowned out by the loveable gooey nonsense.

Still, I found Deadstream’s first half or so weak enough to drag the whole film down considerably.

Three Films Make A Post: VHS Goes to Hell

V/H/S/99 (2022): I was pleasantly surprised to find that even this epitome series of bro horror has become a more diverse project behind and in front of the camera. This apparently doesn’t change my traditional reaction to all VHS films, where I find all but one segment of any given movie insufferably uninteresting. It’s all epileptically wobbling cameras, overdone fake VHS artefacts, and tales of asshats I don’t care one whit about being killed off in not terribly interesting ways by not terribly interesting monsters. Until, finally, the last segment, “To Hell and Back”, by Vanessa and Joseph Winter (also responsible for Deadstream), stabilizes the camera a bit and goes on to create a preposterous and absolutely awesome low budget hell dimension out of very little but sheer creative force and the imagination most of the other segments lack; that imagination is overflowing enough to design monsters for one single shot. The narrative drive as ridiculous as it is inspired. Reappearing from Deadstream is Melanie Stone in another awesome over the top performance that suggests somebody has found her niche.

The Arrival from the Darkness aka Príchozí z temnot (1921): This Czech silent movie by Jan S. Kolár ends on the worst explanation for the supernatural known to mankind, but before everything was a dream, there’s quite a bit to like: the visuals are often more naturalistic than expressionistic – though there is a pretty great alchemist’s lair in the Black Tower – but it’s the reality of old and half-ruined castles, so the film still has a certain uncanny gothic power. It is also an early example of the trope where some kind of reawakened evil from the past decides some poor woman to be the reincarnation of the love of his life, features the very Czech combo of Rudolf II and alchemy, and is generally an interesting entry into the sadly sparse number of silent films of the fantastic we can still see today.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959): This tale of an artist and mad scientist (Anton Diffring) who has become immortal thanks to gland transplantations is a usually ignored, and certainly very minor, bit of Hammer horror. It is still directed by Terence Fisher, shot by Jack Asher and written by Jimmy Sangster, so it’s certainly a technically well made film. There is even quite a bit of clever psychological business going on below the somewhat too melodramatic plot. Also of note are a couple of scenes of Diffring growing green in the face and a bit murderous as well as some pleasantly unpleasant business about his ideas about romance as exemplified by his relationship to a character played by Hazel Court, all situated between scenes of perfectly appropriate ethical deliberation between Diffring and an old friend played by Arnold Marlé. It is also interesting to see Christopher Lee in what amounts to a for him very uncommon role as the romantic lead – which is to say, he has very little to do in this one, in classic Hammer tradition.

Still, there’s just something missing that would turn this from “interesting” to “good” or “great”, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.