Boasting plenty of the behind-the-scenes crew from the Terrifier movies, Steam has enough pedigree to make it a must-see for gore fans.
Forcefully taking over a remote hotel, ringleader Mr Lockwood (an always brilliant Jeffrey Combs) organises an online game in which the guests are the prey for four masked killers. The winner is the one who slays in the most creative way while viewers on the dark web place their bets.
The premise of Stream might be very familiar, there’s still plenty to recommend. The kills are nastily inventive and executed well, which is what we could expect with Damien Leone as FX supervisor. Art the Clown himself, David Howard Thornton, embodies Player 2 as lithely as he does the Terrifier killer, which is a little too on-point, highlighting the crossover of talent with the popular indie franchise. The main victims are a family (headed by Charles Edwin Powell and new wife Danielle Harris, her wayward daughter Sydney Malakey and young son Wesley Holloway) who are likeable enough to root for, while the other guests don’t get enough screen time to register before their inevitable slaughter. The use of streaming, which has come a long way since the Hostel days, gives the youngster a way to become a saviour rather than mere axe fodder (early on, we see him being interrupted while streaming his gameplay). Ultimately, the visceral thrills make us feel as guilty as the killers on screen and gamblers watching – and that is the point of the satire.
Like the Terrifier sequels, Stream runs a little long, but there’s always something going on. Combs delivers his own brand of scene-stealing weasel-ness perfectly, and some of the other cameos thankfully serve more than fan service (it’s now poignant to see Tony Todd, his unmistakable voice resonating wonderfully). While we’re not sure it deserves to become a franchise, Stream is an entertaining diversion.
