Panic Fest 2026 Coverage
Dead Media review
Some fun ideas buried in a movie that feels like it goes on forever.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Dead Media
Directed by Joseph Scrimshaw
Written by Joseph Scrimshaw
Starring Sammi-Jack Martincak, James Urbaniak, Sam Landman, Anna Sundberg, Bill Corbett, Jessica Fenton and Gael Palen
Dead Media Review
I watched Dead Media early in my run through Panic Fest 2026’s virtual offerings. The premise alone made it sound like an intriguing one. A cursed videotape brings the undead creatures of the film into the reality of the people watching it. Dead Media had all the makings of a fun movie to chill on your couch and enjoy. The problem is…it doesn’t end up that way. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of interesting and clever ideas here. In fact, Dead Media throws more cool concepts at you than most movies you’ll watch this year. It also somehow manages to drown those concepts in a sluggish movie that feels like it’s never going to end.
Maggie (Sammi-Jack Martincak) wants to watch a movie with her friends. They pick Night of the Lurchers and settle in to watch in on a streaming service. Maggie’s uncle (Sam Landman) implores them to wait until he arrives with the movie on physical media. He then tells her about the legend of an easter egg no one has ever found on the DVD menu. Finding it supposedly solves the curse of the movie. When she manages to crack it…Maggie finds out that it instead unleashes what’s on the disc into their reality.
Like I said…It’s a fun concept. Dead Media isn’t done there. This isn’t just a movie about Hollywood zombie-like monsters popping into your living room. All aspects of the DVD are on the table. Maggie, her uncle and her friends can pop into the special features and talk to the director. They might find themselves surrounded by lurchers in a scene straight out of the movie itself. At one point, a character from the movie even gets to meet the actor playing him because he exists inside the special features. Some cool stuff for sure.
So…what ended up leaving my cold after my viewing of Dead Media? Put simply…everything is too long. Every scene in the movie feels like it drags. It’s neat that we watch a good portion of the Night of the Lurchers movie within a movie. It’s also neat that we spend some time viewing some special features on the DVD to set up where the story is going to go. We just watch too much of it. It gets Dead Media off to a sluggish start that it never manages to pick up the pace on.
The trend continues with pretty much every scene in Dead Media. When you’re done enjoying the interesting or clever aspect of the scene…that scene continues for another several minutes. The result is that the movie never gets any momentum behind it. The stakes feel unusually low…even when dangerous or deadly things are happening. The lurchers themselves are pretty cool. They move quickly when you do…so there’s an inherent tension in finding one lurking behind you.
Unfortunately, even the third act of Dead Media manages to slow itself down. Another cool idea (the director of the film escapes a special feature and joins the group in the real world) leads to a big lore dump. There’s nothing wrong with that on paper…but when the movie desperately needs to take a jump to the next gear…it decides to take a step back. That’s a tough thing when you’re checking the time remaining every five minutes and somehow there’s always forty minutes left.
Dead Media doesn’t get all the mileage that it should out of a clever concept and several equally interesting ideas. There’s a somewhat lighthearted tone to everything…which doesn’t exactly fit the story unfolding. Horror comedies are tough to pull off because the comedy can easily diminish any suspense…but they can work if the comedy aspects are funny. I wouldn’t use that word to describe this movie. Some of it is amusing enough. I think the comedic beats get dragged down the same way everything else does. By lingering too long in the moment even when the moment has clearly passed.
On the plus side, the cast is fully on board with what Dead Media is doing. They make things watchable even when your internal clock tells you that it’s past time to move on. It’s a shame that so many fine ideas feel underwater here. Every time you become engaged by a neat idea in the story…you’ll end up sighing that it didn’t carry on to the next one quicker. Instead, you feel like you’re watching a cursed DVD in slow motion.
Scare Value
There are some ideas in Dead Media that you have to tip your cap to. Unfortunately, it takes its clever concepts and drags them out pas the point of entertainment. You’ll might occasionally find yourself checking how much time is left in Dead Media…and you’ll be surprised at how long is left every single time. It’s a pacing issue, sure…but really, it’s a momentum issue. Dead Media struggles to find any. Even throwing another fun or cool idea into the story, which this movie does fairly often, fails to get things moving like they need to be.
