So when you’re a horror fan there’s always this question when you meet other fans and they are trying to feel you out – What’s your series? You a Jasonite? A FreddyFan? MyersMug? SawMaw? I dunno what the fandoms are called really but you know what I mean. What was always awkward for me was my answer was usually Evil Dead. It’s a great series, great reputation but ya know, it’s comedy horror! Who likes those?

Me. I like those. I’ll go ahead and say this with my chest: Good comedy horror is the hardest movie to make. I mean it. That is a tough line to walk. So when a movie does it well, it goes into my regular rewatch rotation. And that’s where this movie has ended up. Deadstream is comedy horror that’s about as good as it can get.

Shawn Ruddy is a piece of trash. That’s the first lines of the movie. And he is. He’s that annoying screaming YouTuber that does pranks and stunts and just … you just fucking hate him 30 seconds into the movie. Attempting to recover from losing his sponsors and being demonetized, fresh off of his apology vid, he’s ready to make his return and is going to stay the night at a haunted house.

First, hooooooly shit the acting job here by Joseph Winter (He’s also the director/writer/producer along with Vanessa Winter, his wife) is pitch perfect. God DAMN is he annoying. Some people are gonna have an issue with that, for sure but the whole thing is he is playing a cheesy annoying YouTuber. So brace yourself for that.

Once in the house, it’s basically a one-man show of setting up cameras, scene setting in the house and fake out jump scares and lore dumps until he’s joined by creepy stalker fan Chrissy. But is Chrissy who she seems to be? WOooOooOOooO! His chat weighs in along the screen as he attempts to keep his audience happy as things begin to get weird, gross, and scary.

First, for a found footage style movie, it does a lot right. It’s really smart to show him going around setting up the cameras, describing the rooms, and getting you a real feel for the house. Just the physical layout of the house becomes an important co-star as things start to happen on cameras stuck to walls by duct tape and chat begs for him to go from room to room. Set design in horror movies is insanely important and here again, the little details in this movie separate it from a lot of other found footage movies.

The scares are great. Going back to Evil Dead, sometimes the way to handle some of the gore in comedy horror is to start it out as gross, move from gross to absurd, then push past that through into terror. And that’s exactly what you get with Deadstream. As Shawn is slowly chased, tortured and attacked by the vengeful house (with his chat streaming along side of him making fun of him) you feel more for the little indignities he suffers (Chekhov’s Pissbucket, for example) than even some of the actual physical damage he suffers. Which is also pretty brutal.

There’s also legitimate laughs to be had which serve as awesome tension breaks – The “Are you gonna face me yourself or send your child army after me like Pewdiepie” is an all-timer. Looking up her other work, Vanessa Winter also did the best part of V/H/S 99 (Which I otherwise kinda found a bit meh) called To Hell and Back. The Winters have an excellent sense for timing for a joke to break the tension smashed right up against a disgusting gore gross out and it does it in a way that feels like something an actual YouTuber would do. Nailing the little things is what separates this movie from sooooo many other found footage horror movies and that’s why I can see myself coming back to Deadstream for quite a while.