by Roxy Tart

Directed by Caryn Waecther, the film is about Youtubers being haunted by some vengeful spirits at a Vidcon-esque convention. Sounds amazing! At least that’s what I thought, and it did start out pretty good.

It’s 1984 at a tech convention and the man who invented “LinkRabbit” an online chat room, is being told that no one will use his product and his project is getting shut down. Just then, a new friend, Bobby, hops online and tells him that he’s lonely, and if tech guy will help him make friends in real life, he’ll help tech guy make friends online. So far so good right? Child ghost who’s haunting the hotel figures out how to communicate through the internet, I’m down. Then the walls and the computer start to run with blood, I have no idea why, and we flash forward to 2019. Same hotel, different convention. This is ViewCon, and the hotel is filled to the brim with youtube stars, Instagram influencers, and really bratty little kids. Our leading lady AK Ashley (Lauren Elizabeth) is a Youtuber who is sick of getting paid to do nothing and tired of her adoring fans and wants to quit. When she gets told she doesn’t have a room at the hotel, her manager steps in and informs them that she has 6 million followers, and they should “kick out a snapchat star or something”. The manager overhears and tells her that a suite has just opened up, and sends her to a haunted hotel room that they never book and no one will go into. Look, Ashley isn’t the nicest person on the planet, but I really don’t think she deserved to be sent to her death for being upset that they messed up her room reservation. So she settles into her haunted room, and right away, you can tell things aren’t going to go well.

Next door in the adjoining room Ashley’s friend Megan (Claudia Sulewski) is also having issues with noises, electricity, and ghost boys; not to mention real life boy problems. She’s cheating on her complete douchebag boyfriend with the movie’s “hero” Dave (Keith Machekanyanga). I use the term hero lightly because the way that he eventually figures out what’s going on is that he sees the ghost kid, Bobby (Judah Mackey) standing over him and Megan while they’re sleeping… and he sees this, on a video, that he secretly made while they were having sex. This guy is the good guy?!?! WTF!

Anyways, after that we learn that Bobby isn’t the only ghost, there are other kid ghosts…and a grown man (maybe tech-guy from 1984?). We also learn that Bobby died in 1984, and he owns a bunny balloon that can kill people. I’m honestly still not sure if Bobby killed tech-guy and the other kids, or if Bobby killed tech guy and tech guy killed the other kids, or if the hotel is bad and it killed them all… I honestly have NO IDEA!! Although, that could be because I lost interest about halfway through and found myself staring into space and thinking about how much fun VidCon is.

Bottom line, this movie is a little all over the place, and I’m not sure it really knew where it was going, because I certainly didn’t. I almost feel like we got a few different movies put together into one, with every horror trope/cliche that they could think up shoved into a social media movie.

DeadCon will premiere at the Cinepocalypse Film Festival in Chicago. Following the world premiere in Chicago, Deadcon will continue on a festival tour this summer and fall. Gunpowder & Sky's new label Alter will eventually debut Waechter's Deadcon in select theaters later this year.

For more info about Cinepocalypse visit their website: https://cinepocalypsegenrefest.com

Cinepocalypse Film Fest 2019 - “DEADCON” Review

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