To many terminally online people, there is only one thing scarier than ghosts and ghouls, and that is cancel culture. Don’t you just hate it when you have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve done or said things that other people were harmed by? Ugh, so not cool, guys.
That’s the mindset that the protagonist of Deadstream has before shit starts going down for him. You see, Shawn (co-writer and co-director Joseph Winter) is a YouTuber and livestreamer who got into a vaguely established controversy and is trying to get himself back in the public’s good graces. However, his big comeback stream turns sinister after he accidentally provokes the vengeful spirits trapped in the abandoned house he’s camping out in for the night.
If there’s one thing that Deadstream avoids, it’s taking itself too seriously. Shawn comments on the absurdity of his situation, plot information is explained in convoluted ways, and the ghosts themselves are extremely goofy in both their motivations and actions. It’s explicitly marketed as a horror comedy and it lives up to this description in a dark, dry way thanks to the frequent livestream comments and Shawn’s refusal to drop his kid-and-advertiser-friendly persona.
However, that lack of seriousness becomes a bit of a double-edged sword — mainly because it just isn’t scary. Even if a film aims to blend horror and comedy together, there should still be an equal balance between humor and terror. Unfortunately, Deadstream leans too much into the former, attempting to make up for the latter through awkward jumpscares and ghost makeup of varying quality. The main ghost terrorizing Shawn is perhaps the most egregious example of this unbalance, with her attacks on the livestreamer varying from using ghostly magic to biting him in the crotch. She doesn’t seem like she wants to kill him, but rather just wants to bother him, and given the established severity of what he’s gotten himself into, it comes across as more baffling than funny or scary.
Shawn’s character also becomes a detriment to the film’s effectiveness to scare because of the exact type of character that he is. Anyone who has spent any amount of time on YouTube will recognize the type of content creator that our protagonist is parodying; in fact, SXSW is premiering a documentary on such an influencer that probably inspired Shawn’s creation. However, Much like how the lack of seriousness detracts from Deadstream’s scariness, the fact that the man who we follow barely shows his true self in the face of mortal danger also somewhat cheapens the film. Shawn’s exaggerated reactions and constant soy-facing might seem a little funny at first, but the longer that the film goes on, they actively take away from the scares that the film is trying to elicit.
That being said, it’s difficult to determine whether Deadstream is actually ineffective at what it sets out to do. While unbalanced and a little cheap at times, it’s not like it’s setting out to be anything more than what it is — a display of what would happen if a self-centered social media influencer tried to maintain character while confronting their mortality at the hands of vengeful ghosts. Through that alone, Deadstream succeeds in what it’s trying to do. While it may not be scary, it’s still a commendable effort at capturing a specific era of the Internet in a creative way.
