By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Victor Soares’s Livestream is a completely by-the-numbers outing, to the extent that I had a running tally for every single worn-out horror cliché that this movie contained.
Livestream is a movie which thinks that it’s playing with horror cliches in a knowing and clever way, whereas actually it has the same amount of intelligence and depth as a milk-sodden Shreddie. If a slasher found footage movie has you rooting for the supernatural force or killer from 30 seconds in, then there is no clearer indication that this is a masterclass in how you don’t make a horror movie.
Livestream tells the story of a group of vapid, irritating influencers led by Mia (Sarah Moliski), as they stay in a supposedly haunted house for the purposes of making internet content for their followers. In a surprise to absolutely no one who has watched more than two horror films in their life, the house turns out to be far more sinister than it initially seems, leading to Mia and her gang of equally grating friends fighting for their survival.
To Soares’s credit, Livestream does pull one interesting twist with its found-footage filming style, which, in a subgenre that has been led out to the rodeo so often that it’s begging to be taken to the glue factory, that is saying something. As the title suggests, Livestream is filmed like an actual livestream ( which, in case anyone doesn’t know, is just near or real-time audio-video footage of an event) with comments from various in-universe viewers popping up on the side of the screen as the action takes place.
The problem is that this visual device gets increasingly repetitive, with the comments on the side becoming more and more distracting as the narrative drags on. The open chat device also considerably diminishes the impact of some of the movie’s better pieces of cinematography, making you wish that somebody had forced Soares to find a way to write it out of the narrative after the first half an hour.
Neither Mia nor her group of friends are charismatic or interesting. Mia, as a character, is the sort of insipid, hypocritical content creator that Idubbz or H3H3 ( back in the times when they were both actually funny and respected comedians), would make fun of for preaching mental health and being anti-bullying one moment and then driving someone into a breakdown the next. Thomas (James Michael Cowan), the group funny-man (funny is a term I use as loosely as possible here), is easily the worst of the bunch, with his various antics and permanent gurning sucking the life out of every scene he’s in. The other characters, for the most part, are all bland and pretty much just there for the ride, leaving you feeling indifferent when you do finally see them get bumped off.
The film’s villain, a kind of child Annie Wilks by way of that creepy kid from Hereditary, is a tedious and predictable antagonist, who Soares clearly thinks is his take on Misery for the social media age, but in fact would be a barely passable monster of the week in a Supernatural episode.
Overall, Livestream is a pretentious, empty waste of time, time which you could be spending watching Misery or The Omen (if you want a creepy kid antagonist) instead. Despite being a thriller, Livestream is a movie devoid of any tension or thrills whatsoever.
Livestream is available now on streaming platforms.
Bloody Flicks 