Not as good as I hoped, but still fun (Spoilers)
Feeling that his family is drifting apart, Roy Keenan (Charles Edwin Powell) decides to go on a vacation with his wife Elaine (Danielle Harris) and their two kids, Taylor (Sydney Malak) and Kevin (Wesley Holloway). Unfortunately for the Keenan family, they picked a hell of a time and place to do so, as their hotel gets turned into the hunting ground of four sadistic killers playing a game where “blood on the ground means points on the board.”
The game’s pitboss (Jeffrey Combs), who goes by Mr. Lockwood, has a few similarities to Would You Rather’s Shep Lambrick. Besides being played by the same actor, they both run a deadly competition and give a lecture about integrity, even though the games in both films are anything but fair. The rules in Stream aren’t very detailed, but the game master declaring “overtime” after the survivors manage to defeat the Players seems like cheating.
Last Girl Standing
Stream plays with the final girl trope. Taylor is a teen girl with a unisex name, but she’s also depicted as a brat with an interest in drugs, alcohol, and boys. However, that aligns with more postmodern examples, where you don’t have to be as much of an ingénue as you did before. Usually, you just need to be more wholesome by comparison.
Except, most of the film is told from Roy’s perspective. When Taylor becomes proactive, the first thing she does is kill her own father, who switched outfits with one of the killers to blend in among them. It’s a cruel twist that might be the best scene in the movie. Taylore being the one to take down Lockwood moments later is much more in line with the archetype, however.
Terrifying Filmmaking
Many of the people who worked on Stream also worked on the Terrifier movies. Paul Wiley did the music. Much like with John Carpenter and Danny Elfman, if you know what to listen for, you can tell it was him. David Howard Thornton plays one of the killers, Player 2. Damien Leone did the special effects here, as he did on the first two Terrifer movies, in addition to writing and directing them.
As I wrote in my review of In A Violent Nature, I’m not a huge gore person. However, I must confess to being a little disappointed with the violence in Stream. It is gory at times, but nothing made me want to avert my eyes. Coming from Leone, I consider that a letdown. Ah, I’m sure I won’t eat those words after I see Terrifer 3, which is hyped up as the most violent one yet.
Shout-Outs
Of course, my last point is probably unfair since Leone was working at someone else’s behest. Michael Leavy directed Stream and co-wrote the script with his brother Jason Leavy (who’s also Player 1), Steven Della Salla, and Robert Privitera. The Leavys and Salla previously worked together on a movie called Abnormal Attraction, which gets an Easter Egg in this movie.
Stream follows the same mentality as The Expendables. “You know what’s better than one genre icon, all of them.” Besides the ones I’ve already mentioned, Mark Holton plays a character who gets nicknamed “Ozzie,” which was the name of his character in Leprechaun. During the credits, Tim Curry shows up as another Lockwood/Pitboss, who mentions that he’s “no clown.”
Final Verdict
Stream is a MegaSlasher, meaning that it’s over a two-hour runtime—the fact it didn’t feel that long definitely points toward an enjoyable movie. However, not everything in Stream worked for me. It’s a fun movie, but some of the acting could have been better. There’s also a twist about a character not being who they say they are, which is foreshadowed but could have been built up more.
Still, like I said, I did enjoy this movie. It’s a good thing, too, because the filmmakers have been upfront about how this is intended to be the start of a new franchise. The ending drops multiple plot threads that could be followed up on in sequels, with or without the same cast. I hope they bring Lauren LaVera as one of the new Players. She’s said on Twitter that she’d love to play a villain.
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