Deadware [SPOILERS}

I watched Deadware last night, a couple of weeks after watching Choose or Die. Both films are period pieces about haunted computer games. Deadware takes place in 1999 at the beginning of the internet era and in the infancy of social media.

Deadware is a two-person show starring Ali Alkhafaji as Jay and Sara Froelich as Rachel. Rachel has moved away from San Antonio to San Francisco while Jay stays behind. The distance, coupled with mutual major life predicaments have caused the two to drift apart. The plot centers on them using modern (for them) technology for the first time to video chat one another to catch up.

Jay and Rachel have good chemistry playing friends awkwardly catching up as they both admit to the embarrassing events that led to their detachment. Rachel followed a boyfriend to San Francisco who ended up cheating and leaving her for a woman that he met in a “Vampires are Real” (?) chatroom. She awkwardly admits this while also declaring that she’s making the best of the situation by working a job that at least partially utilizes her degree.

Jay is whiny and comes off as a loser, which keep reading, is confirmed in the film. He is both self-loathing and self-deprecating, starting the film by lamenting that he’s stuck in San Antonio and that he’s likely to die there, too. All signs point to Jay having a lackluster and somewhat dead end kind of a life. He has a History degree that he states that he isn’t using. He still lives with his mother, too, to paint an encompassing picture of his life.

This dynamic is one of the film’s strong points. It plays up on 20something disillusionment and anxiety. Even though taking place in 1999, this dynamic is still relevant today. Through their reunion, Jay and Rachel are each trying to come to terms with significant failings in their lives that played a part in their mutual detachment from one another. This is the strongest part of the film as it’s raw and humanistic.

A mutual friend, Amy, is referenced frequently. Amy and Jay had a strong friendship which Jay unsuccessfully tried to turn romantic but was rebuffed. This is ostensibly the source of his and Amy’s estrangement. The plot starts to progress when Rachel pressures Jay to play a spooky computer game that she believes was played by Amy. Jay is highly resistant to playing but succumbs to Rachel’s incessant pleas for him to do so.

The game is unsettling, and as they play, it begins to reflect real life, while simultaneously giving insight to Amy’s whereabouts. Rachel has not heard from Amy in several months, so despite Jay’s declarations to stop, she continuously persuades him to keep playing as it becomes clear that Amy had also played the game. Through the increasingly creepy gameplay and their conversation, Jay eventually admits that after being rejected by Amy, he hacked into her email and deleted all of her contacts. Jay’s hope was that by isolating her, Amy would see that he was the only one who was there for her and she would therefore date him.

Of course this plan fails and Rachel is disgusted. She coerces him with threats of calling the police if he doesn’t check up on her. Amy lives down the street from Jay, so he walks over to her place late at night. As Jay is conducting the welfare check, Rachel receives an email from someone purporting to be Amy. Attached are bizarre ritualistic videos of dissected organs and strange cult-like people in the woods.

Jay sees that Amy’s place is disheveled as Rachel receives another video where Jay accosts a bound Amy while giving her a verbal tirade. The video cuts back to Amy’s place as Jay is murdered by an unseen force. Rachel is killed pretty quickly after.

The film reminded me of 2018’s Unfriended: Dark Web; a good film that also takes places exclusively via a video chat and depicts the breakdown of a friend group. The best part of the film are the revelations that take place between the leads. The computer game is nice but the real life conversation between Rachel and Jay definitely carries the film. There’s a chemistry between the two that’s authentic. They play up on the awkwardness of rekindling with a friend that you dropped the ball on keeping in touch with.

Jay is revealed to not be a good guy, but Rachel isn’t a very good friend either. She’s a pushy line-crosser who doesn’t respect Jay’s boundaries. Obviously Jay is worse and is a desperate creep, but I liked that Rachel was depicted as being flawed as well. The film loses me in the actual curse of the game. I’m unsure if it’s Amy who’s cursing the game or if it’s the cult that she seemingly got caught up with. Jay states that Amy was into some witchy shit that became a wedge in their friendship but it’s not fully stated if her witchiness is the source of the curse or if it comes from somewhere else.

Adding to the uncertainty is the ending. Jay is clearly killed by the same entity that’s bewitching the game. I’m unsure if the demon was conjured by whatever Amy was affiliated with and is indiscriminately killing everyone associated with her or if Jay was punished because of his actions towards her in life. It could be the later but then why was Rachel murdered? This isn’t clearly articulated in the film.

As with many found footage films, the ending is needlessly rushed which is a disappointment because this film needed 15 additional minutes to tell the complete story. Even more head-scratching is that the film only has a 68 minute run-time, so it’s not like we’re talking about a long film here. They had time to add to an otherwise thin film, so I’m scratching my head as to why it wasn’t fleshed out.

This was a good film that was much better than I was expecting. The onscreen human aspect between Rachel and Jay was the best part of it. It was a horror film because of the spooky shit going on in the game but that took a backseat to the dynamic between the leads. The lamentations on their mutual disillusionment with life, attempt at navigating failures, and general young adult anxiety are relevant and well played out in the film. There weren’t too many scares, which is okay. What they did was nice and set an ominous tone from the first shot. The film deserved a better ending but this movie is a gem that’s flying deep under the radar and was overall an enjoyable watch.

---6.3/10