Stream

I went into Stream without knowing anything about it. Having seen it, I feel like it's a mixed bag, with its strengths being awesome and its weaknesses dragging it down.

Stream falls into a horror subgenre with which I don't have much experience. But it seems like this movie was made for one purpose: carnage candy. It will surely delight fans of exploitation films. My jaw dropped several times at these shocking scenes.

Everything else to do with the horror elements are done well. The masks look great and there are some good jump scares and suspenseful moments. And the music is beastly.

As for the negatives, the best kills happen in the first half. My jaw rarely dropped in the second half. And anything not to do with the horror elements is poor. I try to give a little leeway for such a low budget independent film, especially when it comes to the acting talent available to them. But every conversation is overly long and awkward.

It's like they should cut here, but they continue for an additional 10 or 15 seconds. And this happens 70-80 times, multiple times within the same scene. I was bored and distracted, waiting for something fun to happen.

If that was cleaned up, and a few unnecessary scenes were deleted, Stream could have been a breezy 90-100 minutes. Instead, it's 130 minutes without warranting that runtime.

I had a solid time with this movie, and any fans of this subgenre should check it out. Support independent films.

(1 viewing, opening Wednesday 8/21/2024)

The Keenan family checks into a hotel for a family vacation, unaware that they and the other guests are players in a deadly game.

The story is a mostly mashup of 3 horror flicks from the early 2000s: Vacancy, Halloween: Resurrection, and The Strangers, mixed with a little DeathRace 2000, and it has uncomfortable gore on par with Eli Roth films and the Saw sequels. I've got no problem with movies being derivative or gory if they're good, and I'm all for indies, but the overwhelming acclaim on this one is truly baffling.

The story isn't great, and the dialogue for the Kennan family is consistently poorly written (which makes their acting seem terrible). We never get a satisfying explanation for why the game is happening. Tim Reid is way too good for this movie. Jeffrey Combs. Danielle Harris, and Tony Todd give the kinds of performances fans would expect, and most all of the other genre names are wasted in minor roles. If you're looking for Tim Curry and Bill Moseley, it's a long wait since they don't show up 'til the middle of the end credits. And even Dee Wallace couldn't sell bad dialogue.

It's well-shot. The gore is realistic. But it's ridiculously overlong, tedious, inscrutable, and hardly the perfect 10 of a movie that countless (likely fake) reviewers have proclaimed it to be. A 4 is being generous, and it's mostly for the impressive FX and a few decent performances.

In Stream, Danielle Harris plays the mother of a 16-year-old girl - that makes me feel very old! Harris is just one of the many horror icons that appear in this gory throwback to when horror didn't feel the need to be 'elevated' - just fun. And it almost succeeds. Almost.

The film takes place in a hotel, where the Keenans - father Roy (Charles Edwin Powell), mother Elaine (Harris), daughter Taylor (Sydney Malakeh) and son Kevin (Wesley Holloway) - have decided to take a family break. Unfortunately, the building has been chosen by an underground organisation as the latest location for an online game of murder, the hotel guests stalked and killed by masked maniacs, with the whole thing streamed live for the enjoyment of gambling sickos.

Director Michael Leavy is clearly aiming for the same level of success enjoyed by his pal Damien Leone (director of the Terrifier movies), even to the point of casting Art the Clown himself, David Howard Thornton, as one of the killers. Leone provides the splattery effects, so gorehounds are well catered for, but what lets the film down are the weak script, which is full of plot holes, the performances, an overlong runtime (at just over two hours), and the generic killers, which reminded me of The Purge and The Strangers, amongst others.

If you're in it for the gore and the cameos (which include Dee Wallace, Felissa Rose, Tony Todd, Bill Moseley and Tim Curry), then you won't be disappointed, but considering the talent involved, I had hoped for the film to be much better overall.

This movie was clearly a passion project. It's moreso a love letter to horror fans than one of those movies that takes itself overly serious. It's fun, it's campy, the practical effects are amazing and over the top which is exactly what you'd expect from this team and it has a similar feel to those 80s films we've come to know and love. You can tell the cast had a blast making it and that's one thing that made this so fun to watch. I feel like conceptually speaking there's a lot of real horror here; especially in the age of online media where people do pretty much anything for views and money.

I liked Stream, it has more story than your typical slasher but that's ok, it's a nice change of pace that paid off in the end but can be a little tighter which would've helped more overall at the start. The best parts for sure are the who's who of horror alum, it made for a fun exciting watch of seeing who would come next and pop up. Had a great time on that front, also the practical gore was insane (obv Damien Leone) and it had a nice mix of scary and funny moments which made a rollercoaster or emotions. The killers masks were sick and the concept is really unique and can go anywhere. Some of the dialogue could've been better but the acting was good, especially from all the leads. I think the filmmakers are just touching the surface is what this franchise will be and I'm here for it. They laid a good foundation and I hope to see a sequel or prequel soon. This was made with a target slasher/horror audience in mind and it was accomplished.