Another day, another Full Moon Feature. This review will mark the twenty-eighth film we have reviewed from Charles Band’s low-budget horror company on The ‘Bib.
Death Streamer is (at this time) the latest film from Full Moon Features and is available to stream for free on Tubi, if one feels so inclined. I do, and so, I did.
I went into Death Streamer completely blind. Or blind, but in a Daredevil kind of way. I can’t technically see, but I more or less know what to expect when it comes to Full Moon Features these days. It is only now, after the fact, that I do the fieldwork.
Earlier this year, Full Moon founder Charles Band revealed a new production label called Pulp Noir, which is meant to specialize in edgier, weirder, darker horror and dark fantasy films. Charles Band likes to do this every now and again, and usually, he becomes bored with it. They have tried to unsuccessfully re-brand Full Moon Features once before. They have launched (and, then, relaunched) a soft-core porn label, a children’s fantasy label, and tried (unsuccessfully) to do a string of movies called The Deadly Ten a few years back (which was a real bummer because one of the proposed films was a sequel to personal favorite Full Moon film Head of the Family).
Written by Roger Baron and directed by the man himself Charles Band. I had a modest expectation for the film. By now, I am rarely surprised by Full Moon Features’ output. You have your low-effort, low-quality cash grabs meant to peddle resin statues and crude bongs, a la Weedjies or Evil Bong, you have franchise sequels with a larger budget (Subspecies and Puppet Master), and you have films like Death Streamer. Although none of them are ideal, I would rather watch Death Streamer over any of the aforementioned movies. Death Streamer shows Full Moon Features at least proposing a fun, absurdist horror film, which is all I want from the company.
Early on, we are treated to a topless masquerade, seen partly through the lens of a camera that is streaming live as a ticker counts the tallying subscriptions and viewers.
This already feels like I can trace the ancestral tree for the film. This film feels right at home with Horrorvision, Reel Evil, or Arcade, a Full Moon Feature that tries to capture a trendy part of culture, but isn’t willing to commit the level of disciple to make the concept work. We have seen the concept pursued many times before, but I was, in theory, onboard with the idea of bringing a Full Moon Features spin to it. The opening music vaguely reminds me of the opening of both Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Ang Lee’s Hulk. Our antagonist spikes a woman’s drink with his own blood, and it is then revealed that he is a vampire, ravishing his victim afterward. During this, the thought occurs to me that Charles Band may have done one of his classic bamboozles and tricked me into watching one of his soft-core films.
Afterward, a man named Alexander Jarvis introduces us to his Podcast called Church of Chills, which vaguely reminds me of the found-footage horror film Deadstream (which has a name so similar that it might raise some eyebrows, but they’re different enough to pass the smell test). That film follows a disgraced content creator who tries to bring himself back to the limelight by spending the night at a haunted house. In this film, Alexander Jarvis is a smug, at times, stupid man, who, along with his two co-hosts, runs a Podcast that follows all the little things that go bump in the night. It is an over-the-top portrayal of some YouTube channels you have likely seen, and is as over-the-top and, dare I say, cringe, as you would expect. Jarvis’ Podcast eventually starts touching on and bringing more eyes to the snuff films that our vampire baddie has been streaming online, leading to undesired notoriety to the murderer, leading him to seek revenge.
As I am certain that you can ascertain from the way I didn’t frame this as a groundbreaking development in modern Full Moon Features’ output, Death Streamer neither reinvents the wheel nor offers a particularly satisfactory B-movie for the catalog. The problem is that the filmmakers involved remain either unwilling or unable to apply the attention to detail or disciple needed to make a memorable film. The charm that it is afforded goes unheard because of how much it misses the mark on a basic level.
That in mind, beneath its many flaws, I did find some of Full Moon Features’ yesteryear charm and magic. It is a straightforward concept, which is where I think the company has always found most of its success. It is the story of a vampire striking down people and streaming it, and some Podcasters accidentally knocking the hornet’s nest. Stripped down, this is a concept that would feel right at home with a film like The Creeps (or any other of my favorite films from their catalog). I can see the effort from the core cast and would even go as far to say that their acting is similar or roughly on par with either film I mentioned. The problems are largely based in the writing, directing, and cinematography, or the lack thereof. They could have led a charming film, but the filmmakers’ workman-like, lack of motivation failed them.
If you look at Head of the Family as an example, it was mostly a small cast of characters in a small number of settings. The best experiences I have had with Full Moon Features are when it feels like a glorified short story or a lower-budget, cruder episode of Goosebumps. In its own way, Death Streamer has that.
What keeps it from being an honorable mention among the brand’s filmography and a small glimmer of light at a dark time is how little skill was applied to the horror component. The deaths aren’t memorable in the least, accomplishing nothing other than showing topless women being murdered. I am not criticizing the nudity either, by the way. If I were to criticize it I would be opening an entirely new and different can of worms. Everything attached to Full Moon Features, even in its Empire days, sold sex by the bucket load. The difference is, firstly, it wasn’t as gratuitous and as blatant, but, most of all, it is that even those moments could feel meaningful. Re-Animator had Barbara Crampton in a million states of undress, but when you think of those scenes, you think of those scenes. It felt like a real moment in a film. In Death Streamer, the bits and pieces we see of our antagonist in this film feel like they were just moments, like stock footage stitched together with the rest of the film. It isn’t meant to instill any sense of dread or establish an ominous threat. It isn’t creepy or unique, or atmospheric. It is generic, unmemorable, and throwaway.
Earlier this month, I watched a YouTube video called Milk & Serial. The film was reportedly made for $600 and, frankly, you could tell it. However, it also found a way to check off all those boxes and create a film that made me a fan of the filmmakers. In other words, there isn’t anything stopping Full Moon Features from having a better batting average than it does – except, maybe, the coach.
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