Popcorn Frights 2024: ‘Livescreamers’ exposes slimy underbelly of gaming culture

With her 2018 feature, Livescream, filmmaker Michelle Iannantuono dove into online gaming, loneliness, and a desperation to be seen. The screenlife picture carried a tremendous amount of raw emotion that captured the brutality of the world and the dangers lurking on the internet. The follow-up, Livescreamers, sees Iannantuono continuing her dissection of the digital age by exposing the slimy underbelly of streaming culture – from sexual abuse to toxic fandom. Iannantuono confronts these issues with an anvil-sized pen, and it’s exactly what is needed in today’s environment. There’s no side-stepping matters of exploitation, complicity, and betrayal. And the writer/director makes sure the audience not only gets a few frights shocking their skeletal system but understands how harmful the video game world often is for women and the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities.

Janus Gaming emerges as one of the most exciting and inclusive channels out there. Led by creator/founder Mitch (Ryan LaPlante), the network features such gamers as non-binary darling Dice (Maddox Julien Slide), the soft-hearted Nemo (Michael Smallwood), and the larger-than-life Zelda (Anna Lin). Together, the eight-member squad delights fans all over the world with their skills, personalities, and onscreen chemistry. But behind the camera lens, the group harbors resentment toward the other members. Throughout the film, Iannantuono exposes these grievances and forces the audience to reflect upon their own roles in such a terribly flawed system. When superfan and Discord mod Lucy (Neoma Sanchez) pops in after winning a fan contest, she gets a front-row seat to all the drama – and contributes some of her own.

The gamers meet up to try their hand at a two-and-a-half-hour stream of a new game, one that allegedly has yet to be released to the public. Titled House of Souls, the creepy walk-through tests the group’s patience and their ability to work together to survive a shrieking siren that threatens to tear them limb from limb. But there’s a catch: if you die in the game, you die for real. As the group treks deeper into the game, secrets come to light through never-before-seen video footage of its members airing their dirty laundry. Tensions boil over, leading to explosive revelations and raising the stakes. With allegations and other items of interest tossed around, will they actually help one another when the chips are down? Or will they watch as their once-beloved teammates meet a grisly fate?

Iannantuono keeps the audience creeping on tip-toe to arrive at those answers. Livescreamers might seem like a filmmaker hopping on a soapbox, but she’s crafted the story in such a way that feels like a natural progression of her previous film. As a set, the films serve as an epic takedown of internet culture, in general – particularly the role of fans and how members of online communities are idolized. Iannantuono deftly writes the characters with distinct personalities – even the partner duo Jon (Christopher Trindade) and Davey (Evan Michael Pearce), who act like gay lovers and feed their fans’ sweaty erotica.

Livescreamers also manages a crisper, shinier look. Iannantuono and her creative team boost the feel and atmosphere of their story, clearly benefitting from a bigger budget and smarter instincts. From the game’s electric scares and dark, moody colors to the characters’ emotional unraveling, the film makes great use of its runtime and guarantees to give audiences a much-needed terror-induced jolt.

Livescreamers screened at this summer’s Popcorn Frights.

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