After he got seriously pranked by fellow vlogger Chad (Spencer Harrison Levin) on his last pseudo ghosthunt livestream, Spicy Steve (Michael Bonini) decides to invite Chad, along with vloggers Jennifer (Taneisha Figueroa) and Spencer (Cameron Vitosh) to his next expedition to a manor in the swamps that has supposedly once hosted a Satanic cult that was big on human sacrifice. Of course it's all supposed to be just fun and games to attract maximum viewership, but when the foursome finds a body hanging from a beam in the attic, Jennifer and Spencer are quick to quit the show and make their way home, but Chad and Steve decide to exploit the corpse a little to up their numbers, which includes poking the body and put a hat on its head. Until Steve discovers that most of the audience is actually disgusted so he decides to bail, but when he wants to retrieve his hat from the body, the body is gone, and soon enough he's knocked out. By that point he and Chad have already long separated, with Chad having started his own stream - and when Jennifer sees how his numbers go through the roof, she wants back in. Just what none of them knows yet, Burrows (Terry J. Nelson), erstwhile leader of the Satanic cult, is apparently still around, and still is very much into killing people ...

Now I've said it before and I will say it again, I'm not exactly the greatest fan of the found footage approach as it's in many ways merely a (by now over-frequented) shortcut to actual filmmaking at the cost of any kind of cinematic language. Now what makes #ChadGetsTheAxe stick out of the crowd though is that it knows about its limitations, and pokes fun at its overly shaky camerawork while as a whole feeling pretty much like a satire on the vlogosphere dressed up like a horror movie - and the combination actually works because while the film's horror story floats smoothly, its shortcomings in camerawork and editing really work as part of the joke - and the joke's as hilarious as the satire is biting, making this one very fine ride.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results? (commissions earned)

The links below will take you just there!!!

Find #ChadGetsTheAxe at the amazons ...   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.de Looking for imports? Find #ChadGetsTheAxe here ...   eThaiCD.com Your shop for all things Thai

Thanks for watching !!!