Panic Fest audiences had the chance to catch an all new screen-life horror film called Livescreamers. Written and directed by Michelle Iannantuono, Livescreamers is a sequel to her 2020 film Livescreamer. That being said, you do not need to see the previous film to watch this one. In Livescreamers, a popular team of gamers comes together to record themselves playing a brand new indie horror game. What starts off as innocent fun quickly spirals out of control as secrets are revealed, friendships are tested, and the players are picked off one-by-one, both in the game and in real life.

Livescreamers is an interesting blend of Unfriended and Stay Alive. All of the players are in a studio together, but the views for the audience come from each player’s individual webcam. This allows the audience to see each person’s reactions, while also showing their player’s perspective in the game. If you’ve ever watched someone playing video games on Twitch, then you already have a sense of how this looks. They’re all part of the same gaming group, with the addition of one fan who won the chance to fly out and play with them for the day.

Everything starts out cordial enough as the players get started with this unknown horror game. However, once they realize the horrors of the game are all too real, the group soon becomes fractured. While it might not be the most original premise, what makes Livescreamers stand out from similar killer video game films such as Stay Alive is how it presents various issues specific to the gaming world. Livescreamers touches on topics such as sexism, racism, homophobia, and all manner of bigotry seen in the gaming industry. It even touches on the far too common trend of popular gamers using their platform to inappropriately interact with underage fans. Having their secrets exposed by the game forces the characters to confront these challenging issues, adding to both the tension and the horror, while also shining a glaring spotlight on what needs to change in the gaming industry.

The performances in Livescreamers initially seem uneven, though this also seems intentional. At the start of the film, the performances come across as forced. Then, once the players realize the danger they’re in, the performances shift in a way that brings about feelings of fear, frustration, anger, and sadness. In hindsight, it makes sense the performances early in the film would feel inauthentic, because the gamers are also playing a role. They have personas they have to uphold for their own personal “brand”, as well as that of the group as a whole. It’s a subtle, clever way to emphasize the falsehood of a person’s online presence while also highlighting the shift that occurs when faced with real terror. The entire cast delivers compelling performances, but some of the standouts are newcomer Neoma Sanchez, Michael Smallwood (Halloween Kills), Maddox Julien Slide, Christopher Trindade (Detroit Evolution), and Evan Michael Pearce (Squelch).

With most screen-life and found footage style horror films, there typically isn’t much in terms of visuals. That’s not the case for Livescreamers. By using the Twitch formatting of showing both the player and their gameplay at the same time, the film is able to essentially have two films showing simultaneously. There is the real world, using webcams to record the people playing, fighting, and dying. Then there is the game world, which has surprisingly great visuals that look very much like a real video game. This game world is where most of the striking, horrific imagery comes from, including a large estate filled with strange and incongruous rooms, violently graphic deaths, and a beautifully frightening siren hunting for her next victim. It throws audiences into the action of the game, ramping up the suspense right up to the bitter end.

Livescreamers uses a familiar screen-life horror premise to shed light on the darker side of the gaming world. Iannantuono clearly is quite knowledgable and passionate about this topic. While the dialogue and delivery can be stiff at times, the film really hits its stride as the characters are put in real-life peril. The end result is tension-filled, has great game graphics, plenty of gore, and sends an important message to audiences. There’s no doubt Livescreamers will make some people mad, especially a specific subset of gamers, but that’s kind of the point.

OVERALL REVIEW: 7/10