Spoilers ahead.
As the demon within Lane continues to torment Max and Drew, we get a look at the brutal religious schooling the two young men experienced when they were younger. Max harbors guilt for injuring a nun he tackled to stop her from smashing Drew’s head against the table. Not sure if the guilt is warranted here.
Anyway, things have to get worse, and it ends up Max and Lane had hooked up years before. Before Drew and Lane became a couple. Drew flips his shit at this and attempts to murder Max, which is stupid.
The film makes a critical failure with this twist. First, it is predictable, and second, it smacks of outdated sexual ownership of women. Remember, this event happened before Drew even met Lane.
I had hoped the film was playing with us and they were play fighting to distract the demon. The film even goes as far as to indicate that this is what is occurring. However, once they exorcise the demon it is clear that Drew is truly so distraught that his sexual property wasn’t a virgin (or something) that he won’t even let Max speak.
You might want to counter with the cell phone video Max has of the now years prior sexual encounter. Drew is upset and this but frames it through how dare Max take pleasure in viewing “his fiancé” sexually. Drew never bothers mentioning how doing that was in poor taste for Lane, or that her feelings might matter. Nope. Lane’s sexuality belongs to drew and he will strangle anyone who dares to challenge that.
We both groaned as this twist continued to be a major part of the final act. The framing of the event is so lazy and outdated that it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the film. It also seems like they wanted to once again make Max the least likable person imaginable. I truly think the writers had a bone to pick with streamers and it clouded their creation of the character.
I might be harping here, but this isn’t even a case of infidelity. What does it add to the story? Nothing, really. It does little more than serve as a springboard for the demon to play hot potato with the exorcism information.
Of course, one twist isn’t enough. It ends up that the demon is actually the devil himself!!! The whole thing was planned to get as many people watching and then do some sort of mass possession. The film ends with global chaos ensuing and Max seeing that he has 4 million more followers. I guess he didn’t learn anything from the experience, once again I guess streamers are the worst people on the planet.
Some interesting bits in the middle chunk are bookended by poor writing. I get that writers sometimes want us to hate the main character, but the goal should then be to have us understand them. Here, Max is too easy to hate as he is just a caricature of an industry the film inexplicably wants to dump on. By choosing to write in this direction, the team squandered a fun movie.
Jay Hates Movies 