DEATH OF A VLOGGER
Written and directed by Graham Hughes.
Graham Hughes’s debut feature film is on the surface a spooky mockumentary investigation into a haunting at his namesakes apartment. Any seasoned viewer of this style of film will know this means apparitions and weird happenings occurring in frame for the audience’s benefit as the hapless protagonist blithely talks into the lens about nothing happening. However, just beneath that veneer of our expectations DEATH OF A VLOGGER reveals itself to be a really savvy horror film about the existential threat of social media addiction that society is running into headfirst.
Hughes repeatedly demonstrates, without ever lecturing us, the dangers of feeding the social media machine and expecting your life to improve as a result. In short, the chase for comments, likes and instagram followers transforms people into unethical monsters. Enter the sociopath in a variety of Hawaiian shirts, Steve. A ghost hunter of some YouTube notoriety, he’s really just a tin pot narcissist with a camera and an ego bigger than the ground covered on The Proclaimers 1000 mile round trip.
While the subject of film, Graham, played by the writer, director, editor, himself, descends into a pit of his own madness, Steve only ever wants to poke and provoke – like a child with a stick faced with an angry wasp’s nest – because it’ll get a reaction.
DEATH OF A VLOGGER is the kind of resourceful, intelligent and inventive filmmaking that pours scorn on the constraints of its tight budget and makes scouring the Discovery screens always worth your time.
