Deadstream – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Dead­stream – first-look review

14 Mar 2022

Words by Anton Bitel

Injured person wearing blue uniform, visible cuts and blood on face.
Injured person wearing blue uniform, visible cuts and blood on face.
Joseph and Vanes­sa Win­ter blend hor­ror and com­e­dy in this enter­tain­ing haunt­ed house freak-out.

I‘m Shawn Rud­dy and I’m a piece of trash!”, says the chirpy young beard­ed man, played by Joseph Win­ter who, with his wife Vanes­sa, also co-wrote, co-direct­ed, co-pro­duced and co-edit­ed Dead­stream. His words are as good an intro­duc­tion as any to this online influ­encer who, after sev­en years of fac­ing his fears for the enter­tain­ment of his fol­low­ers on the livestream chan­nel Wrath of Shawn, has recent­ly seen his accounts sus­pend­ed and his spon­sors flee­ing after he car­ried out some atten­tion-seek­ing stunts of high­ly ques­tion­able taste and morality.

For all his wide-eyed, child-like charm, Shawn is a piece of trash – a craven, shame­less self-pro­mot­er who will do any­thing for hits, even at the cal­lous expense of oth­ers. Now that this minor inter­net celebri­ty is mak­ing a come­back, he knows that he has to do some­thing big (with­in his lim­it­ed means) to win back his fan­base. So tonight he will face his great­est fear – ghosts – by stay­ing alone overnight in a remote aban­doned house with a his­to­ry of strange deaths and doc­u­ment­ed haunt­ings. And every­thing will be live-streamed with a mul­ti­tude of cam­eras for an eas­i­ly bored audi­ence and their cho­rus of online commentary.

In Octo­ber of 2022, a beloved inter­net per­son­al­i­ty dis­ap­peared in a house near Payson, Utah while broad­cast­ing a live event. A year lat­er this footage was found.” So reads text that begins the live feed, only for the cam­era to pull away and reveal that the words are writ­ten on a t‑shirt that Shawn is try­ing to flog as mer­chan­dise. Which is to say that while Dead­stream, with its intradiegetic cam­er­a­work and its incur­sions of a local leg­end on real­i­ty, open­ly acknowl­edges its debt to Daniel Myrick and Eduar­do Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project, it also declares from ear­ly on its know­ing, irrev­er­ent approach to the whole found footage’ move­ment, while updat­ing the shaky cam for­mat to the era of mon­e­tised YouTube per­son­al­i­ties like PewDiePie (duly name-checked here).

Shawn is self-con­scious­ly fash­ion­ing his web­cast as a hor­ror fea­ture, and has even record­ed onto tape cas­sette his own accom­pa­ny­ing synth score (“Shawn Carpenter’s Hal­loween”) for the occa­sion which he plays at dra­mat­ic moments – all of which ensures that there is an ongo­ing ele­ment of reflex­iv­i­ty to the Win­ters’ film, which, like Shawn’s, is a low-bud­get atten­tion-grab­ber shot in an actu­al aban­doned Utah house said to be haunted.

This couple’s fea­ture debut is its own, sup­pos­ed­ly real-time mak­ing-of movie – a poioumenon whose very arti­fice is repeat­ed­ly called out by a hilar­i­ous stream of online com­menters who heck­le, advise and cajole Shawn into becom­ing the star, vic­tim or final girl’ of his own sin­is­ter­ly unfold­ing nar­ra­tive. As Shawn him­self puts it, I’m think­ing about pro­duc­ing a film star­ring me – you know, I actu­al­ly think I’m good enough.”

Once Shawn has entered Death Manor’ – believed to be haunt­ed by its first res­i­dent, Mil­dred Pratt, a lovesick poet­aster who hanged her­self there in the 19th cen­tu­ry, and by var­i­ous sub­se­quent occu­pants – he will quick­ly dis­cov­er that he is not alone, and is right to be scared. For this cab­in in the woods is full of way­ward spir­its who want to swal­low his soul, or at least to pick his nose.

What fol­lows is a relent­less onslaught of laughs and frights, both per­fect­ly pitched to ampli­fy one another’s effect. The key ref­er­ence point here – for the loca­tion, for the inven­tive prac­ti­cal effects, and for sev­er­al spe­cif­ic plot beats – is Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, with Shawn repris­ing the role of Ash. Except that our pro­tag­o­nist is less ham­my-cheesy mat­inée idol throw­back than mod­ern digi­cam-wield­ing nar­cis­sis­tic neb­bish. Yet for all his immer­sion in the tech­nol­o­gy of the dig­i­tal age, Shawn will dis­cov­er that this house’s res­i­dent evil, though from an ear­li­er era, is as keen on build­ing an audi­ence as he is.

Dead­stream is smart, sophis­ti­cat­ed com­e­dy hor­ror that finds new ways – and new media – for res­ur­rect­ing old ghost sto­ries. This is a long dark night of the soul for Shawn, send­ing the improb­a­ble hero through a pun­ish­ing ordeal of guilt and tor­ment where he must face demons not just from the house, but from his past. It is also fun­ny as hell. The Win­ters have come.

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