The age of streaming is the age of convenience. Everything you fancy watching is available at the press of a button, all wrapped up in a much more affordable price than buying or renting individual films. But with the rise of streaming, we audiences have lost something beautiful – bonus features. Whether it’s blooper reels, interviews, featurettes or full length director’s commentary, the bonus features always have a lot to offer to enhance the film watching experience, something which has sadly been lost with the rise of Netflix and Prime Video.
Written and directed by Joseph Scrimshaw, Dead Media (2025) is a love letter to physical media. The film follows Maggie (Sammi-Jack Martincak) who wants to relax the night before her grad school audition by streaming an old horror movie, Night of the Lurchers, with her housemates. Her lonely Gen X Uncle Heppy (Sam Landman), however, insists they watch the physical DVD along with all of the bonus features. When Uncle Heppy tells Maggie of a secret ‘Easter Egg’ hidden on the menu, Maggie makes it her mission to find it, accidentally sucking the four into the nightmare horror movie itself. With Lurchers around every corner, Maggie, Uncle Heppy and Brenda stumble through scenes of the film and the bonus features attempting to make it out, encountering director Rita (Anna Sundberg) along the way.
Self-aware and poking fun of the horror genre, Dead Media feels like if Jumanji met Shaun of the Dead. The Lurchers are slow-moving, old-school zombie looking creatures who will move quickly if you move or break eye contact. Once they get their hands on people, they make them relive their worst memories and spit up black vomit before they join the Lurcher ranks.
With a unique plot and peppered with humour, Dead Media is a light-hearted watch with a lot of love for physical DVDs. The film is more focused on the plot rather than any sort of character development, which for a horror – fair enough, pretty common. Despite the plot driving the film, it definitely could have lost at least twenty minutes. Ironically, the nearly two hour film jests about bringing back ninety minute films early on, and, it should’ve taken its own advice.
Tony Thaxton’s soundtrack and the stylistic choices of slow motion and video buffering adds to the dated yet fun older film vibe of Night of the Lurchers within the film. The performances across the cast are on the whole are solid, though no one really stands out above the others. Overall, Dead Media is an entertaining enough film, with clear passion behind it, but could have been a bit more tightly paced.
Dead Media played at Panic Fest 2026
