Strawstalker is a found footage horror, written and directed by George Henry Horton (Dark Obsession), who also co-stars. This takes a look at the falsities of influencer culture, a premise that never became too interesting, despite the horror beginning relatively early on.
The film has a wraparound segment to explain where the found footage that makes up the main story came from. Basically, small-time L.A based social media influencer Sandy (Vincent Ranola - Halloween Immortal) has been inadvertently shown up by two up and coming influencer superstars; Henry (Horton) and his girlfriend Haley (Branika Scott), when his day job as an Uber driver got exposed. As some type of revenge, he then broke into the property they were renting and stole a whole bunch of video recordings he found there. Sandy then edited all the footage he found into a cohesive and chronological 'movie', and so on his next live stream, he announces he is going to play the combined footage for his viewers, and also for himself, as he claims to have been 'black out drunk' when editing the recordings together and so can't recall a single detail that was on them.
The footage story itself charts Henry and Haley's new arrival to L.A, where they hope to cement their reputation and make it into the influencer big-leagues. As their base, they have rented a property in a secluded and private suburb. While there, they discover a creepy scarecrow hidden in the back garden, and this innocuous object begins to unsettle them, with it appearing to have been moved to a slightly different position each time they subsequently spot it.
Strawstalker had a few things going for it. As insufferable as Sandy was, he slightly grew on me. He became almost a proxy for the viewer, with the film occasionally cutting away to him where he gives his reaction to whatever has been going on in the main story. He is also the in-film reason for why the footage being shown has had sound effects and a suitably horror-like film score added to it.
The protagonists proper were even more insufferable, all of this extremely purposeful, as influencers here are never shown in a good light. The couple are constantly filming everything they do, with Henry in particular being very tiresome, constantly acting-up for the camera and goofing around in a clownish way. His catchphrase of "L.A baby!" with his British accent, was so bad, that purely by repetition I came to find it vaguely amusing. Outside of actual cameras being used for the footage, there are additional moments that comes from the couples phones, bodycam footage, and most interestingly, footage that was taken by the antagonist, where they are seen spying on the two. This all flows cohesively, but I found the strange montage that shows all the highlights of the film edited together into a 20 second clump at movie's start an odd choice, as it did kind of ruin some of the more action packed moments.
The horror may start at around fifteen minutes into this 82 minute movie, but it never really progresses to anything that interesting. Sometimes the horror is so well hidden in the background of scenes that I didn't even spot it, when I did spot it, it was always tame. The scarecrow moving around on its own while out of shot was hardly the epitome of terror, I never really understood why the couple found it all so scary. Until the third somewhat wild act, not much of note really happens. There is a slight body count, though being a found footage, I expected it was likely the protagonists wouldn't survive the events. The deaths never looked anything special on screen, and the suggested supernatural element to this was only shown poorly, given a bit of an amateurish feel; set pieces hard to excite. There are no scary moments to be found here, perhaps the point, as the director has stated the film was designed to be campy, and that events while played straight, were not really meant to be taken too seriously.
Strawstalker wasn't all bad. The live-stream segments were done just as well as in other films that use a similar concept, and the wraparound segment at least added something slightly fresh. Overall, there wasn't much entertainment to be found, with it often bordering more on the realm of boredom. Strawstalker can now be rented or brought on Digital HD services in North America, including Amazon Prime.
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