Who would have thought that the big surprise of Halloween 2022 would be a found footage, a genre that has rightly fallen out of fashion? And yet, Deadstream comes to put nerves and zygomatic to the test.
Every year, it’s in October that horror movies of all kinds flock to our big and small screens, with the fateful date of Halloween on the horizon, to the detriment of the poor editor’s free time in charge of reviewing them. This year, however, he didn’t waste his time: it was a good time. On Netflix, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities offers a few episodes that honor its creator. On Disney+, the very surprising Barbarian lives up to its good reputation. Finally, in theaters, Ti West’s meta X slasher begins a promising trilogy with panache.
But the biggest surprise will undoubtedly be Deadstream, coming out of nowhere and the umpteenth representative of a genre that is by definition ephemeral: the found footage. We might as well say that the regulars of the genre didn’t bet a kopek on it, still traumatized by the worst offspring of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, which tried until the end to make us believe in the veracity of their hideous images. At least until it made the festival circuit and won the prestigious Panorama Fantàstic People’s Choice Award at the last Sitges festival.
Presented in midnight session (clearly the best conditions to discover it) Much more than a low-brow jab at the streaming world, Deadstream prefers to use its most absurd mechanics to deliver an authentic horror comedy, a rare commodity these days. Of course, its budget, which we imagine to be microscopic, and several scoriae put its success into perspective. But it remains a found footage, after all. For the rest, its fluctuating tone makes it a sure value for a Halloween party and makes you want to follow its authors’ career with attention.
