Livescreamers: Popcorn Frights Film Festival Review

‘Livescreamers’ follows a group of livestreamers as they sit down to play a brand-new horror game. However, they quickly discover there’s more to this game that meets the eye, and it may be more connected to reality than they realised.

Written and directed by Michelle Iannantuono, the film is a brilliant mix of the horror game ‘Simulacra’ and the 2006 film ‘Stay Alive’. Iannantuono has previously written three short films based on the video game ‘Detroit: Become Human’, all of which were fantastic and very well executed adaptations of its source material. Plus, ‘Livescreamers’ serves as a sequel to 2018’s ‘Livescream’ which carried a similar concept. So, she has an understanding of how to adapt a video game as well as an understanding of how livestreams work. As a Youtuber and someone who used to livestream myself, the way in which the film progressed in terms of its writing and acting felt very realistic.

Right from the start, all the members of the focal streaming group Janus Gaming are preparing for the upcoming stream and talking amongst themselves about their channel and their sponsors. It’s evident that they’ve been doing this as their job for a long time to the point where it’s gone from something that wanted to do because they enjoyed it, to something that’s their job, bowing down to the pressures and tiresome sponsors that come with it. And they’re all fantastic; each character has their own personalities, but also their own personas that they’ve built up on the channel: Nemo (Michael Smallwood – Detroit Evolution, Halloween Kills) has kept social media private for an important reason while Davey (Evan Michael Pearce – Chronicles of Chromaria) and Jon (Christopher Trindade – Detroit Reawakening) joke that they’re a gay couple to increase viewership. And the game takes pleasure in exposing all of that. Each character has their own issues and past traumas they have not only wrestled with but is, unfortunately, reflective of real-life scenarios.

‘Livescreamers’ looks fantastic and commits to a certain environment, which is that of a livestream. My experience of this was watching it on a laptop on full screen and, while this would look incredible on the big screen, watching it on a smaller screen made it all that special. The film fully commits to this visual style, and it works brilliantly because not once did it break away from that. The acting is the same; even when the situation is turning sour, their reactions to what is happening still felt real, despite the strange circumstances that is occurring around them. 

The game itself looks fun to play (minus the haunted/cursed aspect of it!). With Michelle Iannantuono having a filmography of video game adaptations, it makes sense that the focal game has a lot of inspirations in itself, from 2010’s horror ‘Amnesia’ to even ‘Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes’. It not only deserves a spot in the death game sub genre, but those mini games, and the haunted game’s setting, work brilliantly because of the mix of gaming inspirations that are on display and how well they are blended together. And, while the film does have stereotypical jumpscares, complete with high pitched stinger sounds, these scares are well executed because they’re displayed through the game itself. It’s supposed to be a familiar horror game set in a haunted location, reflecting that of games from the mid-2010’s, so it makes sense for it to have those types of scares. 

‘Livescreamers’ is a fantastic and, at times, scary journey and is sure to become a beloved film from the horror community. Not only is the focal game interesting, but it wears its video game inspirations proudly. Plus, the cast are all brilliant and the writing provides them with different and interesting personalities; this, along with the commitment to the live-streaming layout, makes ‘Livescreamers’ an extremely entertaining watch. 

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