#chadgetstheaxe
It’s a road trip to Hell and they want all their followers fully informed and tuned in, Steve, Chad and the combo of Jennifer and Spencer who are known as “Spennifer” regarding themselves as “the Avengers of social media” and hoping to boost their profiles with a trip to “the Devil’s Manor” in rural Louisiana, abandoned site where the Burrow’s Satanic cult massacre supposedly took place seventeen years previously.
While the quartet are collaborating and carpooling on the expedition they each have their own brands to promote and hopefully shift some merchandise along the way, and while Spennifer take a respectful “hands off” approach Chad and “Spicy” Steve are more brash, reacting with glee rather than horror when they find a blood-spattered black pentagram and a dead body hanging in the loft.
Its international premiere at FrightFest following only a single previous screening at Utah’s FilmQuest in October, #chadgetstheaxe is directed by Travis Bible from a script co-written with Kemerton Hargrove, an expansion of their 2019 short of the same name where live streaming supercedes and refreshes what ten years before would have been another dreary found footage knockoff.
Starring Taneisha Figueroa, Cameron Vitosh, Michael Bonini and Spencer Harrison Levin as Jennifer, Spencer, Steve and Chad, the cast keep the energy flowing as divisions arise, Spennifer saying it’s time to call it quits and the cops while Steve is egged on by Chad despite the negative comments flowing into his channel even as viewing figures rocket, expressing the mantra which seems to drive so much modern discourse: “It doesn’t matter if they hate you or love you as long as they’re watching.”
Told in real time other than the opening scene-setting and travel montage, traffic outwith social media influence, with the stream their only connection to the outside world when things go south the often asked question of “why do they keep filming?” is addressed, though with known prankster Steve having managed 533 consecutive days of online content without an intelligent thing to say quite who they imagine will be coming to rescue the boy who streamed wolf is debatable.
Superficially resembling the recently released Deadstream, though the comedy and gore are not so overt comments such as “Blair Bitch Project” keep #chadgetstheaxe from becoming too bogged down despite it having little original to say, the question of whether fame is worth dying for implied rather than asked, but fortunately the characters are less objectionable company than many in such films, over their heads rather than actively unpleasant and comprehending when it is time to retreat even if they then struggle to do so.
The Glasgow Film Festival has now concluded
