Stream (2024)

I’m a fan of event cinema. I like being able to see something special on the big screen. There’s a charm to watching something that wouldn’t normally get a theatrical screening at this point in its existence. Retro movies getting a special screening. Anniversary re-releases. Movies followed by Q&As. Sports, stage productions, and concerts. They’re all a lot of fun to see with other people, just like it’s fun to go to a live sporting event, a theatre production, or a live musical performance. Sometimes cinema can shine by replicating, in its own way, that “live” experience.

One such experience I had recently was seeing Stream on the big screen. It was an event held by Cineplex Odeon, a theater chain here in Canada. What made it an event? It was a limited run and, following the movie, there was a five-minute behind-the-scenes look at movies the producers had coming out soon after. You see, they weren’t just any producers. Stream was made by the team who put out Terrifier 2. That movie did surprisingly well, opening the door for the producers to make a whole slew of other lower-budget horror flicks. Stream was one. Terrifier 3 (which was just released) was another. They made Screamboat, an upcoming horror movie based on the newly public domain Steamboat Willie. I believe there was another movie, but I can’t remember the name. The behind-the-scenes feature showcased all those upcoming movies.

Stream wasn’t a big event movie. Part of that was because it wasn’t advertised all that much. I, for one, found out about it the day I saw it. There was no buzz around it, the way that Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey had people anticipating it some time before. Nobody was clamouring for Stream. The other reason I don’t think it was a big event was that I was one of, I think, three people in the theater. The event crowd didn’t show up. Maybe that was because, as much as we want to strive for originality in movies, people are more receptive to something they have seen on screen rather than the people behind it. They know Art the Clown. They don’t know the producers as much. Art the Clown gets the attention. The producers don’t. Stream had the producers, but not Art the Clown, so people weren’t as interested.

This post is about the event movie I saw, though. It’s about Stream. What was Stream? Roy (Charles Edwin Powell) and Elaine Keenan (Danielle Harris) packed up their kids, Kevin (Wesley Holloway) and Taylor (Sydney Malakeh), for a vacation to a hotel they stayed in a few years earlier. Little did they know that new desk clerk, Mr. Lockwood (Jeffrey Combs), had taken over the hotel to put on a live stream of all the guests being murdered by mysterious masked killers. Could the family band together and make it out before their lives were taken?

I imagine this could have been something special if seen with a big crowd. I saw Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey when it was limited released to theaters and the crowd was hooting and hollering with how crazy the movie got. Stream could have been the same way. It had all the makings of a horror crowd-pleaser. There was sex. There was violence. There was a villain who chewed up the scenery like it was a Ponderosa all-you-can-eat buffet and he had a half-price coupon. It would have had a crowd going wild.

Stream wasn’t a good movie, but it was fun. That’s a big distinction when it comes to bad movies. You can get away with a lot if the audience can see the effort and have a good time. Those two things were abundantly apparent in Stream. Jeffrey Combs elevated every scene he was in. He made every line of dialogue juicier than it had any right to be. He was evil beyond evil, a character relishing in the sadistic acts being committed throughout his hotel. Every murder seemed to turn him on, to the point where he joined in on them. This single performance brought everything together, providing as much fun as possible.

The kills in Stream showcased the effort side of things. Some of them were brutal. Some of them were insane. Not to the level of the producers’ Terrifier movies, but over-the-top all the same. The one that stood out above the rest was when a character had a tic-tac-toe board cut into his chest. Two of the masked killers played a quick game to decide who would deal the final blow. It was done through practical effects, which highlighted the amount of work the effects team put in. The behind-the-scenes feature after the movie brought more attention to the effect, but during the movie, you could tell there was a lot of work put into that kill. There was another kill involving a barbed-wire throat slitting that was also intense. They didn’t hold back.

This is not to say that everything in Stream was on that level. There were a few things that kept it from being an outright good movie. For starters, the acting outside Jeffrey Combs was not the best. Charles Edwin Powell was not a good lead. He wasn’t nearly the worst part of Stream, but he did nothing to justify his character being such a big part of the movie, outside of story. Then there was Felissa Rose. I appreciate horror stunt casting, once in a while. Danielle Harris, Mark Holton, and Dee Wallace were in Stream and were perfectly fine. Felissa Rose was pretty gosh darn terrible, though. She clearly got cast because she was in the original Sleepaway Camp. I’m assuming that role is keeping her career afloat because it’s not her performances. She got a semi-extended chase scene where she nakedly tried to escape the clutches of one of the masked killers. It was bad. Not only did the scene fall flat, but her performance felt completely hollow. It was maybe the one time in the movie where I wasn’t having even a mildly good time.

The other issue with Stream was the writing. I’m not going to claim to be a better writer than any of the credited writers on Stream. I mostly write blog stuff that very few people read. That’s just the way things worked out. But I will say that there was a major, very pointless detour in Stream that could have been completely excised without changing the flow of the story in any way. While the hotel was on lockdown and murders were happening, an unknowing Taylor ran away with a young French man she met to go to a concert. While driving, she decided that she made a mistake. They turned around, snuck back into the hotel, and the French guy was immediately murdered. The sole purpose of this thread was to separate her from her family, which could have easily been done by just having her sneak around the hotel with the French guy. It also gave everyone an easy escape from the hotel, which they didn’t use. This could have not been part of the movie, and Stream probably would have been better for it.

One final thing that felt highly strange and, although fun, didn’t really fit with the movie was what was essentially an epilogue. All the hotel stuff finished. The survivors were taken to the hospital. One of the paramedics was revealed to be watching the live stream. Then it cut to someone else: a guy who seemed to be running the dark web gambling ring these live streams were linked to. He spouted off a bunch of semi-philosophical stuff. Then it cut to another live stream with actors like Tim Curry and Bill Moseley playing the characters involved. Then the movie ended. This stuff was like another five or ten minutes of the movie tacked on at the end. It was interesting. I liked it. It didn’t feel like it should have been a part of Stream. At least, not a part of this one. Maybe a sequel.

And maybe that’s where things are going. Or where producers planned on taking things. They wanted to make a sequel, so they set things up at the end of Stream. I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a sequel. This was fun enough. The idea was there. There’s potential. The execution wasn’t flawless, but the effort and fun were there. That’s all you need from a bad movie sometimes. That’s how the filmmakers can overcome some shortcomings, so you have a good time.

The event cinema of Stream might not have been as eventful as people wanted. Particularly, my screening wasn’t eventful. I know that’s anecdotal. It’s not indicative of other screenings. There hasn’t been any buzz around this one, though. It seemed to be tossed to the side as the bigger, more anticipated production from this team came out a mere two months later. Has come out now. Terrifier 3 is out. That’s what people were craving. They skipped this to see that. Thus, the event was no longer an event. Three people in a screening is not an event.

That won’t turn me off event cinema, however. I’ve seen enough events on the big screen to know that there are few feelings like it. I keep bringing up Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, but that was an event that was eventful. The screenings of Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin that the local Cineplex Odeon did just before the pandemic began were event cinema. Going to see Best F(r)iends Volume 1 and Volume 2 with Greg Sestero doing autograph signings and a Q&A was event cinema. Seeing Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II back-to-back on October 21, 2015, because that’s the date they go to in Back to the Future Part II. Event cinema with a packed crowd. Event cinema is fun. It’s a good time.

I hope event cinema doesn’t die out. People seem to be going to theaters less because of the rise of streaming. Convenience and price can really outweigh the theatrical experience. People have less spending money because of inflation, so they don’t go out as much. People have less free time and can’t go to theaters at designated times to see movies. Hopefully the theatrical experience can survive these changing times, and hopefully event cinema can survive along with it. Even if the events aren’t quite as eventful as you might imagine, they’re always memorable in some way.

Now it’s time for a few notes to tie everything up in a nice little bow:

• Director Michael Leavy and writer Steven Della Salla were both featured in Stream. They had previously been background actors in Sharknado 2: The Second One.
• The great Jeffrey Combs was the main villain in Stream. He was also in movies like Robot Jox, Elf-Man, and Feardotcom.
• Dave Sheridan appeared in Stream. He was previously in A Haunted House, A Haunted House 2, and Fifty Shades of Black.
• I mentioned Felissa Rose in this post. She was known for being in Sleepaway Camp, Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, and Return to Sleepaway Camp. She showed up for a bit in Stream.
• Terry Kiser made a return to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Stream, after previously showing up in both Mannequin: On the Move and Tammy and the T-Rex.
• Tony Todd was in Wishmaster, Control Factor, and now Stream.
• Horror-famous actor Bill Moseley was in Stream. He also showed up in Evil Bong.
• You might have recognized Daniel Roebuck in Stream. He was also in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.
• Finally, Bobby C. King was in both Big Ass Spider! and Stream.
• Did you have a chance to see Stream? What did you think about it? How do you feel about event cinema? You can share your thoughts with me in the comment, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• If you have a movie that you think would make a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. Stick that suggestion in my notifications on Bluesky or Threads, or put it in the comments here.
• Next up, I’ve got another horror movie coming. I’ll be writing about something called Bearry where a giant teddy bear kills people. There’s more to it than that, but I’ll get into the details next time. Will it be next week? The week after? I don’t know yet, but it’ll be one of those two weeks. You’ll know when the post goes up. See you then.

Crossroads (2002)

A reputation can follow someone or something for a long time. That reputation could be based in some sort of reality, or it could have been blown out of proportion. Whatever the case, that’s how people see that person or thing. They see it with that reputation until they actually get to know that person or thing. Only experience can break a reputation. If you spend time with someone or something, it doesn’t matter what their reputation is. You have your own feelings that will affect how you feel about them.

Reputation can be a major influence on people’s opinions of movies. There are so many movies and television shows being released on a regular basis that it is impossible to watch them all. There’s just no way someone could do that. Even if a person didn’t sleep and spent all their waking life just watching movie after movie after television episode after episode, there is absolutely no way that person could ever see everything.

That’s where a reputation could come in handy. Critic reviews or word of mouth could influence a person on whether they seek something out. Bad reviews and bad word of mouth could turn them away from something, while glowing reviews and positive word of mouth could lead them to watch something. A reputation that a movie builds up could influence who sees it and when they see it.

However, sometimes a reputation doesn’t do a movie justice. There could be something with glowing reviews that doesn’t quite live up to the high expectations. There could be something that got trashed in the press that enjoyable. There could be a movie, like Crossroads, that gained a reputation as one of the worst movies of all time, but is very okay. It happens. I’m here to tell you that Crossroads isn’t nearly as bad as people might have you think.

Crossroads followed three newly-graduated-from-high-school friends on a cross-country trip from Georgia to Los Angeles, via Tucson. Lucy (Britney Spears) was escaping the overprotective household of her father (Dan Aykroyd) in search of her estranged mother. Kit (Zoe Saldana) was off to meet up with her long-distance boyfriend who seemed to also be distancing himself emotionally. Mimi (Taryn Manning) was a pregnant teenager who wanted to audition for a singing talent show, ala American Idol. They hopped in a car with Ben (Anson Mount), a young man with a mysterious criminal past, and hit the road.

The strength of Crossroads wasn’t in the story. The movie was a fairly standard teenage road trip movie, though less raunchy than counterparts like Eurotrip or Road Trip. A bunch of young adults got into some troubles on the road. But they were always there to bail each other out. An overbearing parent wanted to know where his kid was. He travelled to get his kid back. There was a romance brewing. You know, all the normal beats for this kind of road trip movie. If people were only knocking it for following the same beats as so many other movies, that would be fine. But the reputation of being one of the worst movies of all time says that people’s issues were more than a simple unoriginal story complaint.

The strength of Crossroads also wasn’t in the serious subject matter. I don’t really know where I would fall on the serious stuff that Crossroads had. On one hand, it worked. I think all of the serious stuff was effective. This just maybe wasn’t the movie for it. Lucy found out her mother left because she never wanted a child at that point in her life and the only reason that she wasn’t aborted was that her father wouldn’t let her mother go through with it. That’s a hard-hitting story beat that worked quite well. If it was in another movie. It felt out of place in Crossroads. Same with Kit finding out that her boyfriend raped Mimi at New Year’s, or Mimi falling down the stairs and miscarrying her baby. These things were important to the movie and were effective for what they were. But all three of these serious moments felt out of place when the rest of the movie was so playful.

Now it’s time to get to the strength of Crossroads. The strength of Crossroads was the rekindling of the friendship between Lucy, Kit, and Mimi. The three of them had been friends as children but had fallen out of friendship through their high school years. As the road trip commenced, they reconnected in a way none of them expected. They still cared about each other, even though their lives had gone separate directions. They were at a crossroads in each of their lives and realized that their bond was what was important, not all the other issues they were dealing with.

This friendship showed up in different ways. There was the mystery of Ben’s time in jail. The three of them gossiped about how he murdered someone. They thought he was a killer. They thought they were driving with a killer. It was thrilling and chilling for them. The way they gossiped with each other nailed the friendship aspect.

Most importantly, though, was the music. Crossroads was a movie that starred Britney Spears. It was bound to have her sing at some point. That music was all over the movie. That music was all over the friendship. The three friends would sing as they drove. They would be in the back seat together, belting out to N*Sync (funny because of Britney’s relationship with Justin Timberlake), Shania Twain, or any other song that came on. They got up on stage together at one point to make a little bit of money performing some tunes. Mostly one tune, a cover of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll. Even the talent show at the end got a Britney Spears performance of I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman. The music and friendship tied together to be the driving force of the movie. It was the main strength of Crossroads. It was what, in my opinion, kept the movie from being one of the worst of all time. This stuff was actually pretty good.

So there you have it. A movie with the reputation of being one of the worst of all time. A movie I watched and realized that the reputation isn’t all that accurate. Was Crossroads a great movie? No. Not at all. Did it have some stuff that could have been done better? For sure. The serious story beats didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the movie. But did it also do some stuff well? More often than not, yeah, it did. Crossroads was fine. It had the potential to be great and didn’t live up to that, but it was fine. It’s still an entertaining little road trip movie that I might end up seeing again.

A reputation could make the difference between a movie finding an audience or not. A reputation could keep someone from being popular. Reputations precede a person or thing and can be hard to get out from under. But once you get to know someone or something, you can rid yourself of seeing them through that lens. You understand the reality of the situation. A reputation can only hurt before the experience. The reality of the situation is all that remains after. Don’t let a reputation turn you off from someone or something.

Now it’s time for everyone’s favourite part of these posts, the notes:

• Justin Long returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Crossroads. He was previously a part of Movie 43, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, and Yoga Hosers. That’s a lot of movies!
• Ritchie Montgomery joined the Sunday “Bad” Movies Five-Timers’ Club this week. He has been in Playing for Keeps, Monster in the Closet, Road House 2: Last Call, Santa Jaws, and now Crossroads.
• Another Five-Timer this week was Kim Catrall. Aside from Crossroads, she has been in Baby Geniuses, Sex and the City, Sex and the City 2, and Police Academy.
• Brandon Henschel returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Crossroads. He was already seen in Gigli and From Justin to Kelly.
• You probably recognized Dan Aykroyd in Crossroads. He was also in Nothing But Trouble and Pixels.
• Shonda Farr was in both Crossroads and Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.
• Finally, Beverly Johnson had roles in 54 and Crossroads.
• Have you seen Crossroads? What were your thoughts? Did you like it at all? Let me know in the comments, on BlueSky or on Threads.
• BlueSky, Threads, and the comments are good places to suggest movies for me to check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Now for the look ahead. I’m not going to promise anything for next week. I haven’t started writing the next post yet. There are two movies I’m choosing between. They’ll be the next two posts, which will be my Spooky Season posts for the year. One of them will be about the recently released movie Stream. The other will be about a movie from 2021 called Bearry. I’ll probably do Stream first, but I’m not going to say I for sure will. I don’t know. Anyway, those will likely be the next two posts unless something crazy comes up.