Influencer Mia (Sarah Moliski) has been invited to spend a weekend at a holiday cabin in the woods with her friends - boyfriend Joss (Mao Sun), comedian Pedro (Victor Soares), singer Cindy (Tiffany Dennis) and prankster Thomas (James Michael Cowan) - in exchange for some publicity. Now this is something that Mia gladly accepts, as it's not only a nice, free vacation, it also should make up some good content for a livestream. And at first everything goes very much as expected, like Liza (Savannah Schakett), daugher of their hosts (Nika Khitrova, Anthony Moore) turning out to be Mia's biggest fan, Cindy performing a song that wins everyone over, Thomas pulling a really stupid prank, and Pedro and Cindy developing feelings for one another thanks to Mia's meddling. So there's really for the ever increasing live audience to love - and then Thomas turns up dead, obviously murdered, and since Joss is the only one not accounted for at the time of the murder, he's a logical (though not conclusive) suspect, something even his girlfriend Mia agrees to - upon which Joss has a bit of a meltdown that borders the dangerous, and Mia and company all bolt. But eventually, Mia and little Liza are cornered by Joss, and who knows what would have happened if it wasn't for Liza's mother knocking him out in the nick of time. So the situation seems to be saved, safe for ... what if Joss wasn't the killer of the piece?

Now I'm usually not the biggest fan of found footage horror (and have said so many a time), but this one really drew me in - basically because it manages to break the mold: Now sure, the film is made up of one single uninterrupted take (and I can't tell whether or not some trickery was involved), but it's based on a well-structured script, it's not improvised but follows well laid-out dialogue, and the camerawork is actually anything but random and captures some well-composed shots with proper depth of space within its single take structure. Plus the script manages to sneak in a kill that comes across as an utter shock and surprise for sure while also including some satirical undercurrents, based on the absolute disconnect between Mia and company and her viewers during the titular livestream - while most of the viewers actually consider the stream as a mere show, there are some comments that could actually have saved our heroes had they ever stopped to pay some attention to their audience and read them. And the fact that the actors all manage to fill out their well fleshed out characters of course only helps making this a very entertaining genre piece.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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