#chadgetstheaxe
2019 · 15m · United States
Directed by Travis Bible
Genres: dark comedy, horror, satire
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
Four social media influencers livestream their trip to Devil's Manor, the former home of a Satanic cult — and as the violence ramps up, so do the views.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A horror film that correctly identifies the actual monster—not the cult, but the algorithm's appetite for atrocity—and lets it consume the genre from inside out; most filmmakers would've played it straight, which is exactly why this one doesn't.
The film's formal debt to found-footage horror is evident, yet it resists the tradition's usual catharsis, instead interrogating how livestream culture inverts the viewer-protagonist relationship in ways the genre hasn't quite reckoned with until now.
The decision to make the view counter the film's pacing mechanism—cutting faster, holding longer, escalating tension in sync with engagement metrics rather than narrative logic—is the single constraint that transforms what could've been a gimmick into something genuinely unsettling.
Reviews
At once a clever spoof of social-media era faux-pas such as l'affaire de Logan Paul, today's online premiere, #chadgetstheaxe, also excels as a purely enjoyable horror flick, delivering the goods when it comes to executing the mechanics of slasher films. The interplay of Chad and the stream's absent, yet ever-present audience (given voice via on-screen chat elements) satirizes the whole of online society—shining a light on the vicious feedback loops of influencer culture.