By Robert Scucci
| Published 14 seconds ago

For years, I’ve been looking for the perfect found footage comedy, with mixed results. The Creep franchise is the closest I’ve come, and I’m beyond glad it’s slowly becoming a media empire that explores morbid humor through its found footage delivery. Mark Duplass is a picture perfect psycho, and his sense of menace pushes the franchise to hilarious extremes. While Creep (2015), its sequel, Creep 2 (2017), and its television spinoff, The Creep Tapes (2024 to present) lean into comedy, it’s still a horror franchise at its core. It’s close, but not quite what I was looking for.

This brings me to 2022’s Deadstream, which scratched that years-long itch so well that I wish I had clicked on it sooner while browsing Netflix. The problem is that I don’t read reviews because I don’t want them influencing my own. If I had, I would have found exactly what I was looking for much sooner than this past weekend.

Deadstream is inherently obnoxious and over the top, parodying streaming and prank bro culture so convincingly that you’ll feel like you’re watching the real thing. Husband and wife team Joseph and Vanessa Winter must have exposed themselves to countless hours of YouTube brainrot to pull this off, and it shows through their co-writing and directing efforts.

Shawn Is Perfectly Obnoxious

After having his channel demonetized for a cruel prank involving the homeless that lands him in serious trouble, Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter), the personality behind the Wrath of Shawn YouTube channel, decides it’s time to fire the GoPros back up and embark on his most ambitious project to date. Having gone on record saying he’s genuinely afraid of haunted houses, he resolves to livestream his trip to Death Manor, which is supposedly haunted by the evil spirit of Mildred Pratt.

Going all in, Shawn pulls the spark plugs from his car, throws his keys down a sewer grate, breaks into the house, and sets up shop. He mounts cameras in what he believes are the most haunted rooms and immediately starts testing his luck. He conducts a séance, destroys what appears to be a precious artifact, and runs around with a camera strapped to his head while documenting everything on one of the many iPads he brought with him. He also makes sure to plug his sponsors whenever the opportunity presents itself.

When one of his fans, Chrissy (Melanie Stone), shows up at the property, his viewers encourage him to keep exploring with her. Shawn soon realizes her presence will cause far more problems than he anticipated, especially since he promised his sponsors he’d be doing this alone. After reciting a mysterious Latin phrase at Chrissy’s urging, he has reason to believe he actually conjured Mildred’s evil spirit. What started as a clout chasing stunt becomes the ultimate test of his will and integrity as the stream takes a sinister, supernatural turn that even he cannot stage.

Production Values That Make Sense

Lesser found footage horror movies often stumble in the production department. There’s nothing more infuriating than characters recording on iPhones while transitions still crackle with VHS era static. Deadstream avoids this technological tomfoolery by leaning into modern streaming logic. Shawn is tech savvy, uses high-end GoPros, and essentially sets up a closed circuit system on his iPad.

We get glimpses of the house’s floor plan from this digital vantage point, while the GoPro strapped to Shawn’s head captures his immediate reactions. Across all devices, we see exactly what Shawn is experiencing, and it’s immersive enough to feel like a real livestream.

What really pulled me in, though, is Shawn himself. He’s irritating in the best way. Loud, rude, constantly talking smack to his audience in real time, and completely disrespectful of his surroundings because he’s so focused on his brand that he doesn’t yet grasp how serious his situation will become. Even when he takes what appears to be a supernatural beating, he laughs it off and keeps romping through the property. At one point, he tapes a GoPro to a Slim Jim because he’s trapped in a compromising position and has run out of tripods. It’s classic live streamer behavior pushed to its most ridiculous extreme.

If you’re looking for a straight up found footage comedy, Deadstream is it. There are genuinely effective jump scares here, but its real charm comes from Joseph Winter’s Shawn Ruddy, who even recorded his own theme music to congratulate himself for his brilliant idea to livestream inside a haunted house.

As of this writing, Deadstream is streaming on Netflix.

Disney Channel’s original series Even Stevens premiered in June 2000 — and more than two decades later, some of its stars have gone on to achieve big dreams.

The family sitcom aired for three seasons between 2000 and 2003, coming to an end when it reached the network’s 65-episode limit. Each episode followed the eccentric Stevens family, focusing on the total opposite personalities of the two younger children, Ren (Christy Carlson Romano) and Louis (Shia LaBeouf). The cast came together once more for the Even Stevens Movie, which premiered in June 2003 and acted as the series finale.

Though it was short-lived, the Disney series was LaBeouf’s breakout role, earning him the 2003 Emmy for Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series.

“I was an ordinary kid, for real, in an extraordinary situation,” LaBeouf recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in October 2019 of growing up on the Disney show.

Scroll down to see where the cast of Even Stevens is today:

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 31 seconds ago

Even though the character didn’t really deserve all the hate, it didn’t take Star Trek: The Next Generation fans very long to decide that young Wesley Crusher was the show’s worst character. He was basically franchise creator Gene Roddenberry’s self-insert character, and this brilliant wunderkind was meant to attract younger fans to this ambitious sci-fi show. However, the fandom decided that he was both precocious and annoying, and it didn’t help that he was written as a Mary Sue who was magically smarter than all of the trained officers around him.

Interestingly, one of The Next Generation’s best writers decided that another character was even more of a child than Wesley. That writer was Melinda Snodgrass, best known for writing “The Measure of a Man,” the episode in which Data successfully argued that he was a living being and not a hunk of Starfleet property. But she also wrote “Pen Pals,” an episode where she had to convince the other staff members that Data was the only one who would casually violate the Prime Directive in this way because he has the mind of a child.

Do Androids Dream Of Alien Pen Pals?

Some quick context: “Pen Pals” is an episode in which the Enterprise is investigating a series of unexplored planets. Data eventually picks up a radio transmission from an alien girl, and he keeps talking to her for a month while concealing his identity. However, after she reveals that her planet is going to be destroyed, Data must convince Captain Picard to break the Prime Directive in order to save a young alien that he never should have spoken to in the first place.

Notably, this was an episode where the Star Trek: The Next Generation staff already knew the general story, but they didn’t know which member of the crew would be the one to speak to this hapless alien. “Pen Pals” writer Melinda Snodgrass was adamant that the only officer who would be foolish enough to speak to the alien girl (and therefore violate the Prime Directive) was Data. The primary reason that she gave was that despite the android’s highly advanced positronic brain, his mind is still developing, and he’s prone to make even more childlike mistakes than Wesley Crusher.

Flagrantly Violating The Prime Directive

As recorded in Captain’s Log: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, Snodgrass successfully convinced other staffers that Data was the best choice because “[Y]ou can picture Data becoming entranced in answering [the] question, ‘Is there anyone out there?’” One straightforward reason for this is that “he’s an android and if you ask him a question, you’re going to get an answer,” especially because “the whole thing would be so charmingly intriguing to him.”

According to Snodgrass, “You never could picture any of the other characters doing that, but Data can make the mistake…and step out of his careful Starfleet training because he’s really just growing up.” She then ended her thoughts with a statement that may very well shock most Star Trek: The Next Generation fans. “He’s more of a child than Wesley,” she said.

This is very ironic because most of Wesley Crusher’s most annoying qualities are chalked up to his being so young and, therefore, prone to mistakes. But Snodgrass sees Data as someone who, despite all the knowledge he has tucked away in his positronic mind, is still trying to figure out what it means to be both a person and a Starfleet officer. Therefore, he is prone to making rookie mistakes (like violating the Prime Directive by talking to a primitive alien and then asking Picard to violate it even more by saving her planet) that characters like Riker or Troi would never make. 

Wesley Grows Up

As if to drive this point home even harder, the B plot of “Pen Pals” involves Wesley Crusher being chosen to lead a survey team of experienced Starfleet officers. One of them pushes back against his orders, causing the young wunderkind to seek out command advice from Riker. The young man successfully convinces an abrasive officer to run some time-consuming planetary scans that ultimately reveal how to save the little girl’s planet from certain destruction, all while demonstrating how much he has grown as a character and an officer.

There you have it, Star Trek fans: Wesley Crusher might be the most hated character on The Next Generation, but the woman who wrote the ultimate Data episode (“The Measure of a Man”) thinks the android is even more childlike than the bridge crew’s only child. Fortunately, both Data and Wesley would spend the next few years growing and maturing, and each ended up being a far better character than they were in Season 1. Wesley left Starfleet and became a traveler, while Data eventually discovered a more fulfilling hobby than operating a HAM radio: playing cowboy on the holodeck.

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There’s a specific kind of thriller that starts by instantly removing the hero’s certainty. Not gradually or symbolically, but all at once. Phone numbers cease to work. Familiar faces go blank. What begins as an ordinary, recognizable life becomes something else entirely, almost overnight. Like The Fugitive and later The X-Files, the series builds tension from that loss of stability. But Nowhere Man pushes further, raising the possibility that even the main character’s memories may not belong to him.

Nowhere Man premiered in 1995 and centers on photojournalist Thomas Veil, played by Bruce Greenwood, with a tired, searching focus that never feels overstated. Veil wakes up to find his identity gone, his wife doesn’t recognize him, his bank accounts are inaccessible, and his closest friend is dead. The only thing he still has is a photograph that someone clearly wants to be erased, and before he can find out why, he must first prove he exists.

In ‘Nowhere Man,’ Identity Is Gone Before You Understand What Happened

“Absolute Zero” makes its intentions clear from the start. Veil steps away from dinner briefly, and when he comes back, his wife has vanished, and the staff treats him like a stranger. The confusion only deepens when he returns home and finds another man living there. His financial access is gone. His identity no longer holds weight. The episode moves quickly, stripping away every point of certainty Veil relies on.

The paranoia increases exponentially once Veil realizes his erasure is not random. It is connected to a photograph he took overseas, an image that captures something that powerful people want erased. The negatives become his only leverage and his only protection. He spends the rest of the series guarding them, even as it becomes unclear whether they contain the truth or another carefully constructed lie. Episode 2, “Turnabout,” reinforces how fragile identity becomes once systems decide you no longer exist. Veil is captured by the same organization hunting him and forced to impersonate a psychiatrist treating another victim whose identity has also been erased. Seeing someone else trapped in the same situation removes any illusion that this is a mistake. It is a process, and Veil is only one piece inside it.

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What separates Nowhere Man from simpler chase thrillers is how often Veil faces choices that complicate his survival. In “Paradise on Your Doorstep,” he uncovers a secret community made up entirely of people whose identities have been erased. They pose as allies, providing safety and a sense of belonging. But their leader eventually pressures Veil to hand over the negatives, forcing him to question whether resistance has its own hierarchy of control.

That sense of isolation deepens in “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” where Veil meets Gus Shepard (Dean Stockwell), a man who has been running from the same conspiracy for decades. Shepard shows him the long-term cost of this existence. The running never stops, and survival becomes routine rather than victory. Veil sees his possible future reflected in someone who has already lost everything.

The show also understands the psychological toll of constant doubt. In “Something About Her,” Veil is drugged and manipulated into believing he has fallen in love with a woman who is actually part of the conspiracy. His emotions feel real even as the situation is fabricated. The episode does not rely on action to create tension. It lets uncertainty do the work.

The Sci-Fi Twist Makes Reality Itself Unreliable

Image via Touchstone Television

What truly sets Nowhere Man apart is its gradual transition from a conspiracy thriller to science fiction. Early episodes hint at surveillance and manipulation. Later ones suggest something far more invasive. In “Stay Tuned,” Veil infiltrates a small town where residents are subtly controlled through media exposure and psychological conditioning. The environment looks normal, but behavior reveals something engineered beneath the surface.

The series takes a more invasive turn in “Through a Lens Darkly,” when Veil is drugged and made to revisit pieces of his past. The memories appear real, but something about them feels off. He begins to understand that even his personal history isn’t beyond reach. It can be manipulated like any other part of his life. This development changes the entire premise. Veil isn’t only fleeing from people trying to kill him. He’s escaping those who can alter his perception of reality itself. That makes every answer questionable, including the ones he discovers.

‘Nowhere Man’s Final Revelation Changes Everything

When “Gemini” arrives, the show shifts the ground beneath Veil one last time. New revelations force him to reevaluate assumptions he’s relied on since the beginning. The photograph that once anchored his search no longer feels like the full story. Certainty becomes harder to hold onto.

The finale doesn’t offer resolution so much as expansion. Veil realizes his fight isn’t confined to a single moment or a single explanation. He’s left moving forward, still searching, still refusing to disappear — even as the scope of what he’s up against becomes harder to define.

Nowhere Man never became a mainstream success, but the tension it created still resonates. It moves with control, allows the unknown to linger, and never pretends everything will be explained. It takes The Fugitive‘s chase structure and X-Files’ and reworks it around a more unsettling question — not whether the hero can prove his innocence, but whether he can prove he was ever truly himself at all.

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Nowhere Man

Release Date

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1995 – 1996-00-00

Network

UPN

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Directors

Ian Toynton, James Whitmore Jr., Guy Magar, Michael Levine, Reza Badiyi, Thomas J. Wright, Greg Beeman, James Darren, Mel Damski, Steven Robman, Tim Hunter

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Bryan Kohberger
New Crime Scene Photos Show Bloodbath

Published
February 17, 2026
7:04 PM PST