By Gabby Foor
We’ve all had that friend that never knows when the joke is over. In this case, the Amazing Andy (Will Madden) and his meager Youtube channel are here to welcome us to a weekend getaway with old friends, even one celebrity, but this is no average staycation. Mean Spirited ably uses some of the best parts of found footage and documentary style storytelling, a committed cast willing to switch roles on a dime, and the backlash against streamers that I’ve seen recently in horror movies. It puts together a genuinely funny, creepy tale on a budget that never feels like it’s being pulled too tightly, with director Jeff Ryan showing a nose for a relevant topic. With the pestilence of prank Youtubers and the fact that everyone always seems to be filming something, Mean Spirited feels like a timely entry into the genre and an exploration into the obsession with internet clout. While this watch may be too campy for some, let the practical effects and dedicated performances do their work, and you may be rewarded with a 21st century tale of “be careful what you wish for” and “there’s no such thing as bad attention.”
A home video sets the tone as the first scene is a young boy, Bryce (Jeff Ryan), caught in a prank gone wrong. Bryce is dragged into the home of an older neighbor, his friend Andy leaving him in the old man’s grasp to save himself. Cutting away to a more ragged, homegrown operation, we find Andy, alive and well attempting with all the bells, whistles and merchandise plugs that make Youtube videos awful to get everyone to look, look please look at him and his channel, Mean Spirited, which is devoted to cruel pranks. His big news in this video is that his now famous friend Bryce – Thunderman (some weird play on Thor with fun costuming that I love) – wants to reconnect for a weekend in the Poconos. Andy is plain and harsh with how he believes Bryce abandoned the channel and harps on all the things friends do: his friend’s weight, his acne, he’s a sellout, he’s fake. Rich, coming from the man who plays pretend for the camera for 35,000 followers, hardly Thunderman numbers. Andy has decided to make a “vlogumentary” documenting the deterioration of their friendship and all of the sordid things Andy believes Bryce might be interested in.
Insufferable as ever, with graphics to make you scream, Andy finally gathers his camera and sound crew, Tom (Daniel Rashid), Joey (Maria DeCotis) and Dew (Will Martin), as well as Tom’s girlfriend, Nikki (Michelle Veintimilla.) A rest stop leads to a bloody postcard on the windshield and the realization that the group is being watched. A figure in an animal mask stares at them silently beyond the tree line, prompting them to leave. The car ride grows awkward as it becomes clear Bryce has no issue; it’s Andy with his crying videos devoted to Bryce and tomato throwing at movie billboards that can’t let his missed chance go. After Andy declares his innocence and lack of jealousy, they finally arrive at a compound-like mansion, and are greeted by a barely clothed Bryce, already sick of the camera. The group is immediately taken by Bryce, but also by the strange amount of Christian iconography hanging around.
The discovery of a single locked door piques Andy’s interest, but Bryce pulls his perpetually nosy guest away for beers with friends, with things going as uncomfortably as you can imagine, between the friendly feud and Dew’s lewd behavior over drinks. Heading back to the house to unpack and unwind, the group decides to play a rigged game: a Ouija board brought and manipulated by Andy to try and guilt or expose Bryce. As the questions get too personal Bryce explodes; the jokes over, Bryce goes to get air and the group disperses. Dew, on his own, suddenly finds himself before the locked room, now open and radiating red light, behind it some unholy looking altars and decorations which we see only briefly, before our masked friend from the rest stop returns and Dew’s footage is cut short.
The next day Andy hires an actor to prank the group and is startled by Bryce in the woods while he’s filming. Bryce seems clued in enough that Andy’s motivation is to undo him, that and to use all of his good food for pranks, but it’s Dew’s new behavior that has people concerned: laughing through the night and suddenly shattering a plate to bits with a fork. Apparently the red room did a number on him, but it’s not until the crowd heads to the lake that the true abilities of what, or who, is in the red room, start to reveal themselves.
Jeff Ryan pulls triple duty as director, writer and star here, and he’s easily my favorite character as the disaffected yet somehow always witty Bryce. Good looks and charm help pull off the effortless celebrity façade, but he digs into the character’s bizarre mannerisms and can have you squirming or laughing, depending on his mood. Will Madden is equally game and never drops the charade as the Amazing Andy until it’s too late to say “cut”, making the twists of this film all the more satisfying. The cast as a whole in the closing portions of the film do a full 180 with their characters and do a convincing, campy job with the new duties assigned to them, utilizing costumes and practical effects to their advantage for a little movie magic with floating cinematography and eyes turned to pitch black.
With satire to spare for the constant Youtube and Twitch pushes and with nods to films like Superhost, Sissy, The Cleansing Hour and many other streamer-based fright films, Mean Spirited seats itself among good company with other filmmakers, equally sick of the social media fervor. I believe now that Youtube, Twitch and their peers are becoming a new generation of entertainment, we are going to be saddled with people like Andy. Mean Spirited taps into that secret hatred we have of our phones, devices and profiles and asked what we would really be willing to give up in order to be relevant enough for the masses. I’m a writer that depends on people liking my work and I already kind of hate that feeling, so this film was enough to make me say I’m perfectly happy with what I have. I’ve seen Mean Spirited three times by now, and with a runtime that’s a breeze due to its entertainment value, at least a few guaranteed laughs and a few shocking scares, you could spare it a view. It’s a comedic, chilling look at how fame is developing at different scales and how it affects the way we may relate to each other. I’ll be waiting for the next blogger to send me over the edge so I can return to Ryan’s film and savor it all over again, but in the meantime, as my favorite celebrity would say, “Thunderman, out.”