DEADSTREAM (2022)

Studio:     Shudder
Director:    Vanessa Winter, Joseph Winter
Writer:     Vanessa Winter, Joseph Winter
Producer:  Jared Cook, Vanessa Winter, Joseph Winter, Melanie Stone
Stars:     Joseph Winter, Melanie Stone

Review Score:

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Summary:

A disgraced internet personality tries to restore his image by spending one night alone in a haunted house where he accidentally angers a vengeful ghost.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Desperate to repair his public image after one of his stunts hospitalized a homeless man, disgraced internet prankster Shawn Ruddy faces his fear of ghosts by livestreaming himself spending one night alone in the reportedly haunted Pratt house in Payson, Utah. While setting up several static cameras, Shawn explains the house’s history.

Built for her by her wealthy Mormon father in 1880, unsuccessful poet Mildred Pratt committed suicide in the home. 11 more people died there until the house was boarded up in 1956.

Mildred had fallen in love with a traveler named Lars Jorgensen, to whom she wrote love letters every day for two years. Lars proposed marriage and invited Mildred to live with him in Boston. When Lars unexpectedly died just before she planned to move, Mildred hanged herself at the top of a staircase.

In 1910, houseguest Max Loland wrote about a recurring dream he had whenever he slept in the home. In the visions, a faceless ghost dubbed ‘Corner Man’ because he could be seen standing in a room corner, would repeat the phrase, “The pond water is still.”

Two babies and three children died in the nursery. The house’s final victim died in a bathtub in 1955. In 2002, paranormal investigators recorded an EVP in the bathroom that seemingly said, “pond water.”

Shawn intentionally locks himself inside the house by dropping the front door key down a grate. While searching the dilapidated home, Shawn accidentally disturbs a hamsa symbol painted on a piece of wood in a closet. Shawn remarks that if anything bad happens to him, it will be because he knocked the symbol off its wall.

As one of the livestream features, Shawn spins a “Wheel of Stupid Things to Do” and the arrow lands on “Séance.” Using a creepy clown doll found in the nursery, Shawn performs an impromptu summoning. A frightening noise causes Shawn to run and hide underneath a bed sheet.

Through live text comments, viewers point out to Shawn that one of his static cameras recorded footage of Corner Man. Obeying a self-imposed rule for the livestream, Shawn goes to investigate. Frightening noises again cause Shawn to retreat to a bedroom where pounding continues on the barricaded door.

The pounding turns out to come from Chrissy, a self-proclaimed superfan who came to meet Shawn. Although Shawn balks at adding a second person to his livestream, Chrissy shows him that her arrival resulted in an uptick in viewers. Through an online poll, viewers confirm they want Chrissy to stay.

Shawn and Chrissy go to the master bedroom to search for Corner Man. There, they find a secret staircase that leads to a cellar. In the cellar, Chrissy retrieves a necklace while Shawn takes a locked memento box out of a trunk of Mildred’s belongings. Shawn also finds a journal, but discovers it only contains Mildred’s poems.

Another spin of the “Wheel of Stupid Things to Do” lands between “Spirit Board” and “EVP.” While using a Ouija board, Chrissy has Shawn recite a Latin ritual she claims will bring peace to the house’s restless spirits.

Shawn has Chrissy investigate a frightening noise by herself. Chrissy ends up scaring Shawn as a joke, but Shawn reacts by accusing Chrissy of being a stalker who is intentionally messing with him. Chrissy suddenly bites Shawn’s neck. Shawn pulls a jagged piece of wood from a wall and stabs Chrissy in her throat. Chrissy seemingly dies, but her body soon disappears.

A young viewer uploads a video identifying the hamsa that Shawn disturbed as a ward against evil. The kid confirms that moving it likely led to unleashing Mildred’s ghost.

Mildred’s ghost attacks Shawn by shoving a finger up his nose. Shawn tries to escape by retrieving the front door key, but discovers it was mysteriously replaced by a key for the memento box. Shawn unlocks the box. Inside, he finds a mummified finger along with a photo that reveals Chrissy was actually Mildred. Shawn runs from more paranormal activity while searching for another way out of the house.

A Latin professor uploads a video that reveals Chrissy/Mildred tricked Shawn into making a sacrificial offering when he recited her Latin words. The professor’s son additionally warns that Mildred drives her victims crazy in order to enslave them. Viewer comments suggest Mildred’s curse is karma for Shawn hospitalizing that homeless man, for which Shawn again offers a halfhearted apology.

Mildred suddenly bites Shawn’s crotch. Shawn escapes the house by jumping outside from a second floor window, severely injuring his leg in the process.

Shawn runs from a ghoul in the woods. A cop finds Shawn, but he turns out to be Max Loland’s ghost, who then attacks Shawn.

A viewer uploads a video of his grandmother Hettie. Hettie explains she worked in the Pratt house as a nanny when she was 15. Hettie created the hamsa to contain Mildred’s evil spirit. Hettie warns that Mildred made a sacrifice of flesh when she sold her soul to the devil, which is how she became so powerful.

Max attacks Shawn in his car. Shawn shoots a hole through the ghoul’s chest by firing a bobblehead doll out of a potato gun left over from a previous stunt.

A piece of paper containing the ritual Mildred used to sell her soul falls out of the journal. Shawn finds out that Mildred’s fiancé was a publisher who planned to finally print her work. Shawn also finds a poem about pond water. Shawn puts together that Mildred’s haunting has actually been about acquiring a following so she could force victims to read her work.

Recognizing the similarities between a desperate poet and an online influencer, Shawn decides to enact a form of “copystrike” violation against Mildred by performing her ritual to reclaim his soul and take over her followers. Shawn asks viewers to translate the spell for him while he returns to the house.

Shawn arms himself with a makeshift spear, holy water hypodermic needles, and a cleaver. Shawn also reflects on past instances of racism and insensitivity before offering a sincere apology.

Shawn encounters a conjoined twin ghoul in the nursery. Corner Man takes away Shawn’s spear and uses it to attack him.

Shawn gets away from Corner Man, but Mildred entrances him into getting into the bathtub. While possessed, Shawn eats an eyeball found in the tub water and also tries to drown himself. Upon breaking Mildred’s trance, a creature attacks Shawn from the water. Shawn injects the creature with holy water and its head explodes.

Mildred attacks Shawn. Shawn hacks Mildred’s head with the cleaver, lures her into another room, and duct tapes her to a floor where he drew the symbol for her soul-selling ritual.

Shawn recites the translated spell. Mildred laughs, rises, punches Shawn to the floor, tries putting another finger up his nose, and waterboards him with his urine bucket.

Shawn manages to get free and pin down Mildred with a cinder block. Mildred still crawls after Shawn as he tries to flee.

Wondering why the spell didn’t work, Shawn remembers Mildred’s mummified finger and Hettie telling him a flesh sacrifice is required. Shawn recites the ritual again, but this time he painfully cuts off his left index finger.

Mildred is paranormally pulled into a pool of water beneath the floorboards. Shawn starts celebrating his apparent victory, but becomes overwhelmed as the house’s various ghouls begin encircling him. The livestream connection cuts out.

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Review:

The only thing many modern horror fans might be tired of more than “found footage” is any film that features an obnoxious internet personality as a main character. So, even though horror-comedy “Deadstream” satirizes both of those dead horses at once, I can understand why someone might immediately lose interest in the premise and not want to go any further than that. They’d be making a rash decision however, because “Deadstream” becomes enormously entertaining as a funny, frightful, and devilishly delightful indie diamond, a rare find in a massive DTV mine mostly loaded with cheerless coal.

Like virtually everyone who is “online famous,” Shawn Ruddy will rub you the wrong way for two reasons. The first is that his claim to fame comes from nothing more than doing Jackass-style stunts for a YouTube audience who can’t get enough of his nuttiness, like sending himself down roaring rapids in a basket for the “Baby Moses Challenge.” The second is that he’s enormously successful at it, resulting in a huge following of fans and lucrative sponsorship deals that would make PewDiePie drool.

That is, until he hospitalized a homeless man in a bum fight and his fame toppled right into the toilet. But Shawn has a plan to win it all back. He’s going to face his fear of paranormal poltergeists by spending one night alone in an abandoned house reportedly haunted by a wicked woman. There will definitely be Ouija boards, summonings, and séances. Maybe there’ll be ghosts, ghouls, and gruesomeness. Whatever happens, Shawn will stream the entire event live so folks at home can follow along.

How well the viewer takes to “Deadstream” largely depends on how well that person takes to Shawn. Part of his personality is intended to be annoying. The other part intends to be endearing. If you’re only seeing the first part and not the second, you’ll know within the film’s first five minutes if you can stomach another 80 of Shawn’s shrill shrieking. His particular “scaredy cat” shtick comes with an acquired taste that won’t please everyone’s palates.

When his character clicks though, you can almost forgive Shawn for being caught up in his own circus as you come to see the charm in his flaws. He seems to have started with earnest intentions. In the pursuit of fast fortune through digital fame, he just got corrupted by the grind of becoming a live-action cartoon for a living. A good heart still beats in there somewhere, maybe. Then again, he tends to be more comically cranky and selfish than heartfelt or sincere.

“Deadstream’s” humor comes at you in many different ways. Whether it’s something as simple as Shawn’s portable cassette player pumping out a spooky soundtrack he recorded himself, or any number of clever callback jokes including a running gag about duct tape, there’s something for everyone to laugh at. At a minimum, there’s often amusement in Shawn’s snark. Like when a viewer implores him to, “Please do the right thing and help the spirits find rest.” Without missing a beat, a terrified Shawn immediately responds, “Hell no! I’m not an exorcist!”

No matter how much you end up liking Shawn, or how much you merely tolerate him, I worried that an 87-minute runtime might be too long to spend with this one guy in a single location. Luckily, another person enters the picture about a third of the way through to throw the dynamics for a loop. “Deadstream” then takes another surprise turn at its midpoint, once again keeping the story spry before the simple setup can grow stale.

Rather than get bogged down by its relative straightforwardness, “Deadstream” avoids stagnation by deploying some technical tricks to keep the screen popping with activity. The main way is with a steady stream of viewer comments in a chat window that intermittently appears in a bottom corner. A number of good gags fly by in the form of personal insults, connection complaints, threats to unsubscribe due to boredom, even someone demanding a birthday shoutout during an intense instance of supernatural activity. Many of them come complete with poor grammar and spelling for that extra air of authenticity.

Shawn also sports a helmet cam, a selfie cam, and several static cameras too. Between the comedic comment stream and the ability to constantly cut between various viewpoints, “Deadstream” maintains a lively pace that doesn’t lose steam even when it’s rolling out gradual exposition or following Shawn as he slowly sneaks around.

Is “Deadstream” the be all, end all send-up of the “found footage” format and social media celebrity? Nah. It just uses those frames to have fun with its frights. Although it does get in some solid jabs at both, like when Shawn unintentionally apes Heather’s infamous “Blair Witch Project” confessional with an oblivious apology involving cancel culture and casual racism.

I wanted to say “Deadstream” is “DIY horror done right,” but that has to be qualified with some clarifications. To be clear, the film has a full crew and quite a few moving parts. “Homegrown” might be a better word, except even that implies a level of amateurship that is definitely not on display here. Perhaps “labor of love” would be best, as this isn’t your typical backyard production shot on the cheap with friends and family working on weekends.

Yet like those basement B-movies, everyone involved in “Deadstream” does double or quadruple duty. Vanessa and Joseph Winter co-wrote, co-directed, and co-produced the film together. Joseph also composes the music and plays Shawn too. The other two producers, Jared Cook and Melanie Stone, are also the D.P. and lead actress, respectively. Anyone in the credits can be singled out for extraordinary efforts in at least two disciplines. I’ll limit additional accolades to monster maker Troy Larson and special FX makeup artist Mikaela Kester. Their practical effects provide a perfect mix of goofy and gory that gives “Deadstream” a signature style of outrageous splatter.

What I ultimately mean to say is, “Deadstream” is the kind of horror movie that indie filmmakers should make when they have access to a certain location and a couple of small cameras. Don’t pay Michael Madsen five figures to show up for a quick cameo. Don’t do another seen-before story about an average suburban couple poking around a white-walled home. Populate your project with passion and personality using spooky stage dressing, inventive props and set pieces (bobblehead fired out of a potato cannon, anyone?), and a lead actor armed with copious quips and quirks. “Deadstream” proves that when creators use their expertise and imaginations to have fun with filmmaking, the audience will have a good time too.

Review Score: 85

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