In short: Deadstream (2022)

Warning: there are spoilers forthcoming!

Deeply unlikable Internet “influencer” and insufferable man-child Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) whose shtick it is to livestream himself fighting his fears while whining a lot aims for a comeback after some past unpleasantness we’ll only learn details about much later. Clearly, the way back into the adulation of the public he believes he deserves is by streaming a night in a haunted house. While whining and fake-shuddering his way through the house, he acquires an unwanted sidekick in the form of a fan called Chrissy who suddenly pops up (Melanie Stone) in a way that’ll only convince an influencer nothing untoward is going on (that’s not a spoiler, surely), lets himself be goaded into an ill-advised ritual, and eventually proceeds to enrage the already rather nasty local main ghost into quite a bit of Evil Dead 2 like horror comedy business, though with a lower body count.

I didn’t enjoy Vanessa and Joseph Winter’s horror comedy quite as much as the rest of the Internet apparently did. Largely, that’s on account of my growing dislike for the “all influencers are horrible and fake” set-up I’ve seen too many horror movies use in the last half decade or so. It’s a bit too pat and too self-congratulatory a set-up, usually lacking nuance, and doesn’t get better by the number of films that simply repeat it. This also leads to films whose first half consists of deeply punchable asshats with one character trait doing little of interest, a problem we encounter here as well.

The first half of Deadstream is admittedly somewhat better paced than these things often are, but it still forces us to spend a lot of time with a single idiot doing little of interest. Shawn isn’t exactly a grower, either, or charming in his idiocy like Evil Dead’s Ash, so even once the film gets going in his second half, I can’t say I was ever on his side instead of the ghosts’.

To be fair, the tour de force parts of the film are typically fun enough to shift the focus from how little I enjoy spending time with its main character, and the pacing of the slightly weird horror comedy set pieces becomes downright great. Stone’s gleefully over the top full body performance is also quite the thing, providing the force Shawn fights with an appropriately extreme personality. There’s also some mirroring between her and Shawn’s motivation going on, but this mostly gets drowned out by the loveable gooey nonsense.

Still, I found Deadstream’s first half or so weak enough to drag the whole film down considerably.

Three Films Make A Post: VHS Goes to Hell

V/H/S/99 (2022): I was pleasantly surprised to find that even this epitome series of bro horror has become a more diverse project behind and in front of the camera. This apparently doesn’t change my traditional reaction to all VHS films, where I find all but one segment of any given movie insufferably uninteresting. It’s all epileptically wobbling cameras, overdone fake VHS artefacts, and tales of asshats I don’t care one whit about being killed off in not terribly interesting ways by not terribly interesting monsters. Until, finally, the last segment, “To Hell and Back”, by Vanessa and Joseph Winter (also responsible for Deadstream), stabilizes the camera a bit and goes on to create a preposterous and absolutely awesome low budget hell dimension out of very little but sheer creative force and the imagination most of the other segments lack; that imagination is overflowing enough to design monsters for one single shot. The narrative drive as ridiculous as it is inspired. Reappearing from Deadstream is Melanie Stone in another awesome over the top performance that suggests somebody has found her niche.

The Arrival from the Darkness aka Príchozí z temnot (1921): This Czech silent movie by Jan S. Kolár ends on the worst explanation for the supernatural known to mankind, but before everything was a dream, there’s quite a bit to like: the visuals are often more naturalistic than expressionistic – though there is a pretty great alchemist’s lair in the Black Tower – but it’s the reality of old and half-ruined castles, so the film still has a certain uncanny gothic power. It is also an early example of the trope where some kind of reawakened evil from the past decides some poor woman to be the reincarnation of the love of his life, features the very Czech combo of Rudolf II and alchemy, and is generally an interesting entry into the sadly sparse number of silent films of the fantastic we can still see today.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959): This tale of an artist and mad scientist (Anton Diffring) who has become immortal thanks to gland transplantations is a usually ignored, and certainly very minor, bit of Hammer horror. It is still directed by Terence Fisher, shot by Jack Asher and written by Jimmy Sangster, so it’s certainly a technically well made film. There is even quite a bit of clever psychological business going on below the somewhat too melodramatic plot. Also of note are a couple of scenes of Diffring growing green in the face and a bit murderous as well as some pleasantly unpleasant business about his ideas about romance as exemplified by his relationship to a character played by Hazel Court, all situated between scenes of perfectly appropriate ethical deliberation between Diffring and an old friend played by Arnold Marlé. It is also interesting to see Christopher Lee in what amounts to a for him very uncommon role as the romantic lead – which is to say, he has very little to do in this one, in classic Hammer tradition.

Still, there’s just something missing that would turn this from “interesting” to “good” or “great”, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Three Films Make A Post: Record it all, I want you to know why we did this

Scarlett (2020): The titular Scarlett (Melanie Stone) has to use all the asskicking techniques her spy daddy taught her when he is kidnapped. And whenever John Lyde’s film gets around to showing that, the film is a perfectly decent and pretty fun bit of cheapo action, shot with a degree of verve and with enough reversals in situations to keep interest up. Alas, the film suffers from a series of pointless flashback sequences which try to hit home about Scarlett and Dad’s relationship what a viewer will have understood in the first couple of scenes, destroying pacing and patience in the progress.

La cueva aka In Darkness We Fall (2014): A Spanish group of annoying assholes and nitwits on vacation manage to stumble into a cave and get lost there. Unfortunately, one of them carries a camera, so we have to suffer through eighty minutes of bickering, cannibalism, shouting and moaning, POV-style.

I know, I know, “people are the worst” nihilism is always a thing to bank on in horror, but in the case of Alfredo Montero’s film, people aren’t the worst because the film makes a convincing argument concerning this, but because its script makes them perfectly unlikeable and annoying; they fall towards cannibalism with the thorough enthusiasm of a conservative cutting social budgets. The characters also act like idiots throughout, even once they’ve gotten lost never bothering to mark where they’ve already looked for an exit,not  trying to preserve water instead of starting on the cannibal holocaust, and so on and so forth.

Untitled Horror Movie (2021): And welcome to the present of POV horror, another Zoom horror movie brought to you by The Pandemic™. Nick Simon’s movie is trying to find its own niche as a very meta kind of horror comedy, where actors from a fictional The C&W-style urban fantasy series trying to shoot a horror movie via Zoom before the inevitable axing of their show (and conjuring up a demon in the process) are indeed played by actors actually working in that field. The humour isn’t very deep or complex, and a lot of the Hollywood jokes are exactly the ones you’d expect, but the actors clearly have fun making light of themselves and their world. The film is also well directed, generally doing at least one thing that must have been at least partially difficult to realize under lockdown per scene. Even though the horror elements won’t keep anyone awake at night, they’re not boring either.

In short: Nocturne (2016)

Obviously running away from something or someone she’d rather not face this night, Jo (Clare Niederpruem) goes to a small graduation party of people she isn’t exactly friends with (as played by Hailey Nebeker, Melanie Stone, Darien Willardson, Colton Tran, and Jake Stormoen). There are various strains of dysfunction among and between these people - suggestions of rather typical young adult problems from eating disorders to jealousy and general prickishness abound. But instead of just getting drunk, or stoned, and sleeping with the wrong people for the wrong reasons, our protagonists decide to pretend they’ve never seen a horror movie and hold a séance. Of course, what starts out as a game becomes rather disturbing when the entity they are talking to demonstrates a bit too much detailed knowledge of everyone’s darker secrets as well as a nasty streak. The thing frightens them so much, they do the big no-no in movie séances (as well as in polite society) and break it off without saying goodbye to the entity.

During the course of the night, everyone’s problems and secret sins come to the surface; people begin acting only on their worst impulses in ways that can only lead to pain for everyone involved. But that’s before the really bad stuff begins to happen, from the old standby of demonic possession to various pretty horrible deaths.

I didn’t go into Stephen Shimek’s indie horror Nocturne expecting much of it at all. There are, after all, countless films about séances gone wrong right now, most of them not worth the time watching them, and adding US style demons like they are  en vogue right now to the mix usually makes a film even less interesting. After all, how often can you watch some possessed girl float in the corner of some ceiling while sprouting bad theology before you become bored by it? I have certainly reached that point of saturation a year or two ago.

However, Nocturne is rather more interesting than the set-up or the demons suggest. It starts with a group of characters that seem much more convincing young adults than typical for this sort of production, with problems that ring truer than usual and whose escalation through the supernatural is effectively horrifying because it cuts to what feels like actual bone. For once, the more psychological aspects of the demonic activity here seem actually insidious because it’s not going through the demonic playbook but actually preying on the weaknesses of the characters. Weaknesses the script and some more than decent performances by the group of young actors have prepared well.

Once things turn physical, Shimek shows a fine macabre imagination that keeps the connections between the demise of the characters and their weaknesses open without going too far in the direction of ironic deaths. These deaths, the audience is supposed to feel, so ironic distance would be fatal for the film’s effect.


Speaking of effects, the film’s practical effects are more than decent too, never becoming the sole point of the film yet also keeping the proper unflinching pose. As an added bonus for friends of the Weird like me, Nocturne also features some rather cool parts where it plays with the nature of space and time, as well as that most rare of things – a twist ending that is actually an organic part of the film that came before.

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes (2014) & Mythica: The Darkspore (2015)

Somewhere in your typical post-D&D secondary world fantasy land. Slave girl Marek (Melanie Stone) has a bad leg, a penchant for magic and a good heart as well as big dreams of freedom and adventure. Soon, she finds herself heading for the nearest adventurers’ tavern, and involves herself in a mission to rescue the priestess sister of priestess Teela (Nicola Posener) and a magic stone from a group of orcs (and the ogre Teela rather not wants to mention). Despite bad pay and a total lack of experience by anyone involved Marek manages to rope in warrior Thane (Adam Johnson) and thief Dagen (Jake Stormoen) and suddenly, she’s the head of your classical travelling adventurer party. However, Marek can’t expect the typical boring life of an adventurer, for something darker than normal magic dwells inside her, which just happens to neatly fit into the reason for the kidnapping of Teela’s sister and what follows.

Microbudget fantasy epics – the Mythica series has just gone into a fifth and apparently final part – are a dangerous proposition, and if you’re a cynic, it’s easy to fall into the “filmed LARP session” route when talking about them. I certainly have done that once or twice. It’s not a fair approach to these films, though, especially not to these two films directed by Anne K. Black, for while they certainly are straining against their miniscule budgets (and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people involved indeed had LARP and table top RPG experience, but so have I), they are just as clearly created with a degree of enthusiasm and love that in this case does project very well onto the viewer.

Sure, some viewers just might find at least some of the enthusiasm misguided, seeing as it translates into a film whose idea of fantasy is based on concepts from Dungeons & Dragons, and 80s Big Fat Fantasy novels and therefore full of clichés the regular fantasy reader has encountered a million times before. I find myself happy to encounter these clichés, for there aren’t really all that many films that contain them, and even fewer presenting them with as much conviction as Black’s do, eschewing irony and distance for earnestness paired with the sense of fun of films playing in their makers’ favourite sandbox. From time to time, that earnestness leads to some rather too stiff dialogue (especially Teela’s priestesshood doth verily sound pompous) but it never gets so much to ruin the films even a little, if a viewer is willing to just roll with them.

The second film isn’t quite successful at incorporating a bit more humour but we’re not talking Odious Comic Relief characters or anything else too horrific here.

In fact, the scripts are among the films’ advantages, seeing as they merrily skip around filler, use exposition only as much as strictly necessary (to be delivered by five minute per film guest star Kevin Sorbo), and actually do know how to find the middle ground between episodic questing and an actual plot. Why, the films even manage to have satisfying plots of their own while still driving the main narrative of the series forward.

Black’s direction is fine low budget work, filming around the budgetary problems without seeming to cut any corners unnecessarily, using some fine outside locations to best advantage and keeping things flowing quite wonderfully. Most of the action scenes – be they between people and people in orc costumes or people and CGI – are handled very well too. The special effects are generally fine too, with a few weaker moments, of course, but they generally work, unless you’re one of those people who believe a low budget film’s effects need to look as impressive as those of films whose effects budgets alone are tens of times as high as the total budget of the smaller film, and can’t just enjoy good work for what it is. The same goes for the production design, really.

The acting is generally much better than expected, with little of the stilted acting that mars quite a few genre films made on very little money. Like with everything else in these two films, everyone involved just seems to go out of his or her way to do their best, which pays off really well. Lead Melanie Stone, for her part, I can’t help but describe as awesome, effortlessly selling Marek as likeable and capable heroine with oversized problems, and looking good in a cloak.

Both films are just great fun as straightforward fantasy adventures, and there are not too many films around you can say that about.