Everybody has used a ride-share app, right? Uber, Lyft, Via. But despite its commonality, few horror films have delved into what can go wrong while using one. The new horror movie Spree embraces the everyday of contemporary times, such as ride-shares, social media, vlogging, and turns it into a strange and horrific adventure.
Premiering in January 2020 as part of the Sundance Film Festival, Spree began to change the game when it came to the horror genre. The film was met with mixed reviews, many praising Stranger Things’ actor Joe Keery on his performance playing the lead character, wannabe influencer and ruthless murderer Kurt Kunkle. Months later, the movie was released for distribution and has since found a home on Hulu. Spree follows Kunkle, an unpopular vlogger, as he begins filming a deadly series called “The Lesson” where he offers tidbits on being a rideshare driver, how to become famous, and his approach to murder.
Spree is told almost entirely through diagetic cameras— whether mounted on Kunkle’s car interior or held in the hands of Kunkle himself and his passengers. As an audience member, it is jarring to watch the movie play out through amateur camera angles and low-fi quality. However, it helps the viewer escape into this dramatized world that is in some ways identical to the Westernized world of technology and surveillance.
The handheld camera angle isn’t unique to the movie. It’s been used in horror and suspense movies like Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity and then later, in the low-budget and indie series Creep and the Taken-esque thriller Searching. This technique requires either substantial parts or the entirety of movies to be presented entirely through video recordings, typically found and viewed in the future by an outsider.
Found footage movies offer a deeper sense of realism than one would expect, despite whatever unimaginable or fabled feature might be presented on screen. Due to the video recording quality, this footage is often seen to be more raw as the production-quality is lowered, the off-screen commentary is heard, and the character is seen as the “filmmaker”— it is amateur; the camera shakes, it loses focus, it is dropped. Spree amplifies this sense of realism by highlighting the real evils and dangers of excessive social media usage and influencer culture as Kurt Kunkle is driven to madness by his failing streams and practically nonexistent audience.
Although seemingly good-natured and cheery, Kunkle’s desperation for attention and validation from the online world (shown in the movie through platforms similar to Instagram and YouTube) leads him to go to extremes to receive it. He drives around, picking people up while working his ride-share job, and kills them, live on camera. His M.O. involves allowing his passengers to help themselves to a bottle of water which he has poisoned (he filmed a tutorial on how to do that too) and then he dumps the passenger’s body. Throughout the movie, Kunkle grows angry as his views refuse to break into double digits and a popular influencer, whom he previously babysat, accuses him of staging the murders
The situation worsens as Kunkle meets awful people and successful personalities. Any falsified semblance of the empathy and humanness he displayed prior has disappeared. He gives Jessie Adams a ride, an up-and-coming comedian played by former Saturday Night Live player Sasheer Zamata. She has a large social media following and refers to Kunkle as desperate as he reiterates his tagline, “follow me @KurtsWorld96, follow for follow!”
Escalation occurs as he finds himself taking over the accounts of previously mentioned influencers while continuing his murder spree. He begins receiving different levels of attention, all of which enrage and encourage him more; the multiple influencers he encounters mock him, his killings begin to garner media and police surveillance, and those watching his stream continue to egg him on by telling him to commit murders while under the pretense that he’s faking it all. At this moment, Kunkle and his “viewers” have reached the point of no return.
As one can imagine, resolution is hardly found. Spree leaves the viewer with a sense of helplessness as the world presented in the movie seems inescapable and indistinguishable from the real one. By the end of the comedic horror film, there’s been a number of horrific and shocking moments. However, it brings the viewer full-circle, back into what started it all— it ends with a series of vlogs and a look into how the “fictional” online world embraced the theatricality of Kunkle’s violent antics, and continues to do so on more discreet corners of the internet.
Spree combines many bone-chilling elements of similar movies within the genre that preceded it. However, it took it steps further as it presented an unresolved yet highly realistic, and a bit taboo, storyline. It’s much-needed social commentary, not far from what one would find with Black Mirror. By the end of the story, the desire for influencer fame still exists in both the fictional world and the current world and Kunkle’s violent spree is cherished and honored, purely for its entertainment value despite the irreconcilable harm done.
Spree is available for streaming on Hulu.
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