Spoilers don’t know about copyright strikes.

It’s a match made in hell, but unavoidably horror films have embraced the online social network culture with open arms. Unavoidably this comes with a ton of references that are dated the moment that the movie comes out, but most often than not we at least get a good laugh out it. What better fun to be had when the influencer is chased by some supernatural entity and we can get a good horror comedy out of it.

(Credit: Shudder)

Deadstream (2022) is written and directed by Joseph Winter and Vanessa Winter. An online personality aka “influencer” named Shawn (Joseph Winter) is trying to grow his followers through crazy stunts after losing sponsors due to shady scandals. In a desperate move, he’s decided to spend the night at a dilapidated house that has had multiple accounts of people being killed as well as ghost sightings.

The good news is that the horror is played straight up and deadly. The comedy is basically situational and rest majorly on Joseph Winter’s performance as the squirrelly Shawn. When our definitely-not-heroic-protagonist decides to pick a safe room in the one room where no ghost sighting has been recorded, that seems like a smart decision. Then he finds a weird sigil and decides to destroy it, and I know that every horror movie veteran knew at that point this guy just signed his own death sentence.

Horror comedy, like all comedies, is a balancing act. You have to play it camp, but you have to make it scary enough to make it spicy. And somehow, despite the crazy shenanigans it works. I mean, we’re all rooting for the ghosts to go after Shawn, but it does become a rather entertaining romp of frightful scares and hilarious screaming. To add to the hilarity, the classic live stream chat section is keen on helping Shawn (most of the time) and seem to always know someone that he can talk to and dig himself out of trouble. They seem to be more supportive of Chrissy (Melanie Stone), a stalker-ish fan of Shawn.

Highly recommended for horror comedy enthusiasts and even casual audiences with very minor reservations. You’d think the movie will break the tension with Shawn hilariously getting scared or hurt the first times, but it keeps the stakes high and even pull a few tricks. Some of the practical effects can be easy to spot as makeup or masks, but most of them manage to pull off some genuine scares. Worth a watch.

That will do for now.