Movie Night Goes Straight to Hell
DIRECTED BY JOSEPH SCRIMSHAW/2025
Dead Media is a fun, nostalgic throwback to the days when physical media ruled our attention spans, before streaming fractured that attention across an endless array of choices. There’s something wonderfully cozy about the film’s setup: three friends and one of their uncles gathered together, talking about a movie that has developed its own mythology.
It recalls a time when discovering a strange or obscure film could make it the most important thing in the world for an evening, when simply tracking down a movie and sharing it with friends was part of the experience rather than another selection buried among thousands of titles on a streaming menu.
That affection for physical media gives Dead Media much of its charm. The film attempts to marry that nostalgia with an assortment of familiar horror tropes, and the two sides don’t always come together as completely as the director seems to intend. Some of its ideas are more successful than others, and the execution occasionally falls short of the cleverness of the premise. Still, there’s an infectious enthusiasm running through the entire thing that makes those shortcomings easy to forgive.
Dead Media may be imperfect, but it understands its audience. This is a movie made by horror nerds, for horror nerds, and its genuine affection for movies and the rituals that once surrounded watching them makes it a fun ride.