Those heady days of the Video nasties in the UK. Hunting down what was thought to be illegal VHS tapes of The Driller Killer, Necromantik, The New York Ripper, and others because it was the cool thing to do. The thrill of the backroom tape is long gone now into something sinister with the advent of the Dark web as chronicled in the brilliant Canadian film Red Room. Today, you have the gorefest horror film Terrifier 3 in theaters, sopping up blood on the big screen for a limited time. Enter Stream, a new franchise entry into the ‘stalk splatter split’ genre.
Dee Wallace, Daniel Roebuck, Dave Sheridan, Felissa Rose, Tony Todd, Bill Moseley, Jeffrey Combs, and Tim Curry appear in this film. Damien Leone, the creator of the Terrifier franchise, does the practical effects. Art the Clown actor David Howard Thornton is recognizable through his body movements.
The story is about Mr. Lockwood (Jeffery Combs) booking guests in his hotel, which turns out to be a massive game of killing by a masked henchman. He’s secretly running an online streaming game where a group of masked players compete to see who can rack up the highest body count while gamblers bet on the outcome in their gaming apps.
Soon, the Keenans family, Elaine (Danielle Harris from the Halloween franchise), her husband Roy (Charles Edwin Powell), and teenage hormone repository seventeen-year-old daughter Taylor (Sydney Malakey), and her younger brother Kevin (Wesley Holloway), arrive at the Pines Hotel for a family-bonding, non-tech weekend. Joining them is a bunch of guests, ranging from drunks to a pair of gay women and a nerdy fellow who ends up being in an unfortunate game of X’s and 0’s.
“…a massive game of killing by a masked henchman.”
Stream is a film filled with brutality and theatrics. Lots of gore, torture gouging, drills, knives, eyeballs, entrails, blood all over the screen. The film is powered by Jeffery Combs, who looks like actor Dabney Coleman in his best odd film role to date, on par with the Herbert West Reanimator series and his dripping evil as Weyoun in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series. Tim Reid, best known as “Venus Flytrap’ from WKRP in the Cincinnati series, has a great turn as a retired policeman who suddenly doesn’t help with matters as the bloody body count mounts. Dee Wallace screams her heart out and delivers one of the film’s strongest brutal moments without blood. Daniel Roebuck is a belligerent drunk with his nagging wife, Felissa Rose. Tony Todd shows up at the end of the film and oozes menace that sets up a sequel.
The most poignant moment, which is perhaps unintentional by the filmmakers, is that Stream is one of the first slasher kill films to show a real reaction to a death. When Roy finds the body of his wife, Elaine, his reaction is amazing and deep. He is a father who shields his son Kevin from the sight in the room and is crushed internally by the death. The subtle moment in an otherwise hi-octane blood bath is even more devasting at the film’s end which is like the ‘surprise kill’ in The Descent. The picture explores the effect of violence on children and who they can access as Young Kevin witnesses a horrific death on camera when he taps into the murder network in his notebook.
Stream is a picture for those who enjoy gore, mayhem, and unintentional emotional connections, along with some cool cameo appearances in hack-and-slash format. Social commentary on the gambling culture, whose Life is Important and what we will pay for, along with sprinklings of the Dead by Dawn gaming franchise, The Most Dangerous Game, Cabin in the Woods, and the Battle Royale series, all blend in one bloody bath.
"…Gore, mayhem, and unintentional emotional connections."
