DEMONETIZE
dir. Alexander Boyd Watson
2026 • 90 minutes
CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW
There was a brief, almost naïve moment when social media promised democratized fame. Upload a video, make people laugh, invent something ridiculous, and maybe your life would change. Joey Valence & Brae embody one of these optimistic fantasies. They gave themselves a year to chase music before returning to ordinary life, and "Punk Tactics" exploded into hundreds of millions of streams. Their music, which opens DEMONETIZE with "Baddest Bitch (In The Club)," borrow from Beastie Boys’ style with such infectious sincerity that imitation becomes celebration. It's the perfect overture, as they represent the best the internet can offer, while the rest of the film will be filled with characters that represent the obnoxious filler oversaturating the doom-scroll.
The Influencer film is a relatively new sub-genre, Alexander Boyd Watson and Janine Hogan understand something that most movies about influencers don't. The problem isn't that influencers exist. It's that they've become the latest performers in an entertainment machine that's always demanded louder personalities and stranger spectacles. Hollywood had movie stars. Television had reality celebrities. The internet has creators, all feeding the same hungry audience that insists nothing is ever enough.
The five influencers trapped inside the haunted Ratliff House are written as varying forms of influencer culture. A new variation on the psychoanalytic archetypes. Some of Watson and Hogan’s characters have a bit more depth, while the shallowest of monetized celebrities dies first. There’s the fashion-forward tutorial-producing and sex working provocateur, the highly-detailed product tester and fanatic unboxer with an anime digital girlfriend, an old school artist-comedian influencer looking to make a comeback, a raunchy Johnny Knoxville wannabe seething with insincerity, nihilistic pranks, and ready at any moment for a kegstand, and finally the TikTok dance craze singer-songwriter who’s new to fame and still using Kaogei (the weird-cutesy facial performance thing) as a sign-off. They're absurd caricatures, but only because real internet culture has already exaggerated itself beyond parody.
A pair of Ghost hunters who once held a captive audience with Ghost Pros lure this group of content creators into their haunted house. These old pros represent a nostalgia for the past attention economy. Give me another episode of Jack Osbourne hunting New Orleans paranormal activity instead of a hundred reels of pranks gone bad. Martin and Terrence’s haunted house is set up as a content studio with spirited lighting. Martin’s eventual scrambling for relevance and ratings, makes him a villain. But that’s the interesting conundrum, there are no heroes either. Sure, horror film logic says statistically one of them has to survive the night, but that doesn’t make them heroic.
This is where DEMONETIZE becomes unexpectedly clever. It isn't really about ghosts or possession, though they are impressive when shown. It's about algorithms. The title speaks of something most of us will never experience; to wake up one morning and discover the same invisible system that adored you has now decided you are of no value. And demons. Both erase people without need of explanation. Both feed on attention.
The movie never settles into smug superiority, and that's what makes it work. Lesser satires spend two hours sneering at internet personalities as though audiences haven't helped create them.
Watson and Hogan recognize that everyone here is addicted to validation. The paranormal investigators crave belief just as desperately as the influencers crave engagement. Everyone wants an audience. Everyone wants proof they matter. Seeing them as caricatures helps the film’s audience forget they’re the one’s who have helped to create them. Practical effects and horror gags just raise the stakes.
Chad Lebaron, better known as Cherdleys, plays the obnoxious prankster. He’s someone who understands internet celebrity from the inside out and is in on the joke. Doug Jones lays out a moral query and says, “It doesn’t matter to me, I’m getting paid either way.”
Watson and Hogan deliver a funny condemnation of internet culture within the framework of a haunted house film. A few gruesome deaths, jump scares, and gallows humor make for a swift and fun 90 minutes. Remember, the haunted house isn't the real trap. The trap is believing the audience can ever be satisfied. The ghosts of Ratliff House are only doing what the algorithm does, consuming people who confuse attention with immortality.