Deadstream is a fantastic horror-comedy that takes a questionable aesthetic and premise, and creates lots of scares and laughs through its innovation.

Joseph Winter stars as Shawn Ruddy, an online personality known for his wild personal challenges which he records and posts on a video-sharing website.  However, his infamy has overshadowed his career after a recent stunt has dangerous consequences towards a stranger.  In an attempt to bounce back (after posting an obligatory apology video), Ruddy wants to face his fear of the paranormal and spend the night in a haunted house.  He plans on livestreaming the entire endeavour, and he establishes a rule early into the experiment that he must seek out suspicious activity if he hears or catches anything on any of his devices. 

As with the “found footage” horror sub-genre, the audience watches Ruddy create his surveillance system as he provides some insight on the disturbing past that plagues the haunted house.  And with Winter being on screen for most of the movie, he’s given the daunting task of creating a character that’s faithful to traits of obnoxious content creators but also act as a one-man Greek chorus that reflects the audience’s reaction to various thrills throughout Deadstream.  Winter, a likeable and hilarious actor who blurs the line between a protagonist and an anti-hero, does a great job and rises to the occasion. 

Winter has co-written/co-directed/co-produced with his wife Vanessa Winter, and Deadstream is the work of an ingenious filmmaking team who are consistently working on the same frequency.  There isn’t a missed beat in this stressful and highly amusing horror, and the filmmakers are incredibly skilled with staging lingering build-ups and providing satisfying scares with impressive practical effects.  Also, the inclusion of multiple perspectives over different platforms (including the anonymous viewers in the comments section, who are arguably more ruthless than the creatures coming after Ruddy) gives Deadstream a deeper scope detailing how Shawn’s adventure is affecting other people.

Deadstream, quite simply, creates a new level in quality for first-person horrors. 

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie