‘Mean Spirited’ FrightFest 2022 Review – Found Footage Horror-Comedy Adds Nothing New To The Genre

Plot Summary: A failed vlogger buries the hatchet with an old friend who’s possessed by a demon.

Mean Spirited is another Internet based horror film, which anyone who knows me, knows I’m a sucker for. Lucky for me, there has been a glut of these films hitting the market. Most have been enjoyable on some level. Though, I knew it was only a matter of time when I would get a real stinker. Sadly, Mean Spirited hits an all-time low. From the outside, Jeff Ryan never feels like he wants to give us anything remotely original. Have we seen movies with a film crew going into the middle of nowhere with bad results? Yes. The Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project, and more recent examples like Superhost and Deadstream. This framework has been done before sure, but the latter have interesting and different enough spins to be wholly unique and able to stand on their own.

Mean Spirited cribs from a lot of horror movies. But sadly, it never steals any of the good stuff. The end result is clunky dialogue, bad to no character development, and wow, it is a chore to sit through. The pacing is awkward with a brisk runtime of 96 minutes feelings bloated and overall aimless. This movie needed a tighter focus on the narrative which feels lethargic until its rushed finale. Not a shocker that this movie has zero tension, let alone scares. Oh, and guess what? This is also part comedy. I am using that word incredibly loosely. This runs the spectrum from slightly homophobic to just overall annoying.

Speaking of, meet Dew (Will Martin), who is maybe the single most grating character I’ve seen in a film in a while. Imagine if skunky warm beer with cigarettes butts floating in it learned to walk, then to shout horribly offensive things to you. That would be Dew. He is the dude-bro-est of dude bros, and I hated every single second he was on the screen, and folks, that’s most of the runtime. Seriously, all this guy does is be horrible and call people pussies for nearly the entire runtime. Fun! The other attempts at humor falls flat, which adds to another issue this film has, which is it’s a tonal mess. For example, the finale is trying to convey some urgency as all hell is literally breaking loose. But, Andy, while filming all of this, stops everything to do another take for his vlog. Look, comedy and horror is very difficult to do. For every brilliant blending like Shaun of the Dead, you have many more that fail. It takes a lot of talent to effortlessly fuse any two genres, especially comedy and horror. You have to strike a fine balance, and this doesn’t even come close. Mean Spirited isn’t scary or funny, it’s just a slog to get through.

On the face of it, the premise isn’t a bad one despite not being very original. Hell, I think there were a lot of cool things they could have done with the set-up. Moreover, I can’t help but think that this would have made a better short film. There is a certain irony to finding something nice to say about a movie called Mean Spirited. Hmm…Well, the movie is decently shot, and the locales they chose are at least nice to look at. Despite some unevenness, the actors do a fair job, especially given the SyFy original movie material they have to work with. There is a fun DIY, go for broke energy at times that made it enjoyable. But, at the end of the day, this is a basic demon possession movie with a generic cult that adds nothing new or exciting to the genre. It’s a movie that I feel like I will completely have forgotten about in a week’s time.

I hope if any of the filmmakers are reading this, that they take this criticism as constructive. Unlike other critics, I don’t enjoy tearing a movie apart, especially one made on a budget. This is certainly not meant as mean spirited.

Mean Spirited had its World Premiere at FrightFest 2022. 

Directors: Jeff Ryan

Runtime: 94m

Cast: Michelle Veintimilla, Jeff Ryan, Will Madden, Daniel Rashid, Neville Archambault, Charlie Pollock