- Directed by Sebastian Dove
- Written by Sebastian Dove, Gabriel Molnar
- Stars Cassandra Due, Emonjay Brown, Kahlo De Jesus Buffington, Nicholas Thurkette
- Run Time: 1 Hour
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEIGHbJJIAo
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This looked like it had a super low budget, but good acting and a good script turned it into a decent work. The only real complaint would be that it was a little drawn out and might have been more effective if it was shorter.
Synopsis
Nate turns on his webcam and tries to call Mia, but there’s no picture of her. It’s some kind of dating app and the two start talking about philosophy. He’d love to date her in person, but he’s under house arrest and literally cannot go out. She talks about getting arrested once for disorderly conduct.
Nate starts having some trouble with his internet connection, so he freezes for a moment. Mia suggests that it could be a ghost, which he thinks is amusing. He doesn’t believe in ghosts and thinks all the ghostly TV shows are staged. She sends him to ghostwebcam.com and wants him to watch it.
He goes to the site and sees what she describes as “a haunted house.” He demonstrates how easy it is to fake a chair moving on the camera. “The Internet is just a web of lies,” he mansplains to her. She watches the chair on the website move on its own and gets scared. He thinks this is a waste of time.
Mia hears something thump in her house and says she lives alone. She goes off to check it out as he waits. “She’s here. The ghost.” Nate watches words appear on Mia’s wall, “Mia You’re Next.” The call goes dead.
Nate calls Kate and tells her he thinks he witnessed a murder. He tells her about the call with Mia. She doesn’t see how the ghost would have gone from the haunted house to Mia’s house to attack her. Kate goes to the ghostwebcam.com site and doesn’t see anything. She thinks maybe Nate is cracking up with stress from his upcoming trial date.
Vick joins the call and he wants to see the haunted house link too. The three discuss the existence of ghosts. The ghost writes “Vick” on the dust on the table in the haunted house. They look up the phone number of the guy who runs the website, but there’s no answer. The guy almost immediately calls Nate back, but he says it’s not his website.
Stan joins the call. He says he hasn’t used that website since the early 2000s. Someone else must have poached his domain. It was just a blog before, but now it’s a webcam. That’s his old house on the screen; he moved out two years ago.
The ghost writes “It’s time” on the dust, and Stan is confused. They do a search on the property records, and find out that Mia is the current owner of the house—but the photo was taken in 1979. The photo is from her obituary.
The ghost camera now shows Stan’s current home. It’s outside. “It’s here.” Stan walks off-screen and the connection drops. Nate, Vick, and Kate debate the reality of the situation. The topic turns to Nate’s upcoming trial, the prosecutor, and the evidence. They look up Stan and find that he died thirty years ago. They find a photo of Stan and Mia together—in the 70s.
Vick gets ready to log off but hears the ghost coming for him. The ghost camera now shows the outside of Vick’s front door. Vick locks himself in the bathroom, but there’s someone in the house with him. They watch Vick die onscreen.
Now the website is showing the outside of Nate’s house. He tells Kate that this is her chance to hang up and run away. Nate’s parole officer calls, and Nate tries to convince him of what’s been going on. Nate’s GPS shows that he’s downtown—at Kate’s address.
The webcam changes, and now the camera is showing Rachel’s house; she’s Nate’s ex, the one who accused him of sexual assault. He tries to call Rachel to warn her about the ghost, but he’s been blocked. Kate tries to call, but can’t get through.
Nate spots people standing behind Kate. It’s Vick and Stan. She accuses him of lying about what happened to Rachel. “I despise you,” she says. She says she’s not Kate, she’s Mia. “You haven’t learned anything, have you?” Nate insists that Rachel bruised herself; he didn’t do it.
Mia/Kate tells her story about how Stan, her father, raped her when she was twelve. Then the ghost webcam comes back on, and the original Mia is on the screen. She jumps out and “gets” Nate.
Tim, someone new, turns on his webcam. He’s talking to a girl named Mia…
Commentary
There’s been a lot of these webcam horror films since Covid. Some are good, some aren’t. This one looks good, and the acting is fine, but it’s awfully drawn out. There have been similar stories told in fifteen minutes, and they were better for it.
As soon as anything bad happens, the cameras go off. There’s literally zero action, and all violence happens off-screen, but they still manage some creepiness.