2020’s Spree offers a fresh take on the found footage film in the age of YouTube stars and Instagram Live. Following rideshare driver Kurt, played by Joe Keery, the film tracks him trying to become famous by any means necessary. Specifically, he promises to lay out the lessons of his new plan as a way to gain followers and exposure. Because this is a horror movie, that plan comes with it a fair amount of blood spilled.
But we’re going to look at the opening of the movie and the heavy lifting it’s doing to set up what follows.
Audience Investment
The serial killer as main character has been done plenty of times before. From Peeping Tom and Bucket of Blood to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and American Psycho to more recent fare like Sightseers, The House That Jack Built, Like Me, and You, filmmakers are unafraid to ask you to get inside the mind of a killer.
What Spree does a little differently is that it wants you to pity Kurt. And since we’re about to spend 90 minutes watching him kill a series of people, it goes full bore on getting you on his side in the opening sequence.
Using the conventions of its YouTube format, Kurt gives a brief summary of his life so far direct to camera. Lots of familiar tropes, like white board diagrams and phone footage, keep the visuals interesting and upbeat. But the story they tell is a dark and sad one, of parental neglect and someone hungry for love but unsure of how to get it. It paints a deeply sympathetic portrait of who Kurt is and how broken he is. Kurt’s World, it’s clear, is a cry for help shouted into the digital abyss and no one has answered.
To be the clear, the movie doesn’t justify his actions. But it does make us feel for Kurt while driving home the theme of social media isolation and disassociation. Kurt isn’t that far off from the thousands of cringe videos circulating the web, other lonely people desperate for attention. What makes Kurt different is merely a matter of degrees. Without the context of the opening, this would be a hollow exercise; with it, it’s a tragedy.
The Take Away
Never forget about audience buy-in. You want us to follow around a killer as he knocks people off? You either have to make him compelling or the way he does it compelling. Spree opted for the first via sympathy, but either option is on the table.