Directors/Screenplay – Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter, Producers – Jared Cook, Melanie Stone, Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter, Photography – Jared Cook, Music – Joseph Winter, Special Effects/Monsters – Troy Larson, Makeup Effects – Mikaela Kester, Production Design – Amy Leah & Nelson Smith. Production Company – Winterspectre Entertainment/Cook Filmworks.
Joseph Winter (Shawn Ruddy), Melanie Stone (Chrissy/Mildred Pratt), Jason Wixom (Corner Man/Cop Corpse)
Shawn Ruddy is a popular livestreamer known for his wild stunts. However, he has fallen into a disgrace and had his advertising withdrawn following an incident where he challenged a homeless man to a bumfight. Shawn is banking his comeback on a livestream conducted from a reputedly haunted house in Utah that has been nicknamed Death Manor. Shawn enters the house, filming everything he does with a harness he is wearing and cameras planted around the house. However, once he starts the livestream, Shawn discovers that the house is indeed haunted by the spirit of Mildred Pratt and other ghosts who proceed to terrify him.
Deadstream comes directed, written and created by Utah-based husband and wife team Joseph and Vanessa Winter. The two have been making short films since the late 2000s. One month prior to the premiere of Deadstream, they appeared with the To Hell and Back segment of V/H/S/99 (2002), which was also in the Found Footage format. Here Joseph Winter also plays the film’s lead character of the livestreamer Shawn.
The Found Footage genre has been with us since The Blair Witch Project (1999) and took off meteorically with the release of Paranormal Activity (2007) in 2009. There haven’t been too many Found Footage films within the horror genre that have taken a comedy approach before this – although I have a lot of liking for Found Footage 3D (2016), which deconstructed and overturned the genre in exceedingly clever and hilarious ways.
Deadstream is a film being conducted on admirably low-budget resources. It is essentially a one-man show where one of the directors is also the main character who is on screen most of the time using a set up where he is filming himself. Outside of Joseph Winter’s character, there is only one other major speaking role and the rest is people on a screen, mostly being relayed via chat windows and the occasional video clip.
Certainly, Joseph Winters is a sufficiently gregarious and over-the-top character and he throws himself into the role such that his performance buoys up and carries a substantial proportion of the film. The film has a lot of energy in its madcap rush from one happening to the next and Joseph Winter’s comically aghast reaction to everything.
The film is made on a low-budget meaning that the supposed haunted house is just an old abandoned house covered in graffiti and noticeably lacking in big gloomy halls, billowing curtains and ghostly lighting effects of a traditional haunted house. It is also clearly evident that the film is relying on old-fashioned practical effects – often no more than something falling over or a door slamming of its own accord – rather than CGI. There are however some quite good makeup effects.
Trailer here