Editorials
The Endless Quest for Online Validation in ‘Spree’ & ‘Superhost’ [Double Trouble]
Social media is a cursed necessity of modern life. The hunt for likes, RTs, comments, and shares is never-ending. Most days, it feels as though you’re just circling the drain and waiting for that next dopamine fix. The crushing weight to constantly level-up in the online world is insurmountable and forces users to push their own psychological and emotional limits to get a bigger payback in virtual currency. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree and Brandon Christensen’s Superhost play in extremes, both films delving into the world of online streamers and YouTube content creators.
“We’re all kind of sad, pathetic, and desperate regardless of what side of the ideological spectrum we’re on,” commented Kotlyarenko in an interview. He later noted his film as “anti-ideological” in many ways, particularly in how it cultivates a collective unease around online identity and the lost art of nurturing actual value. Desperation to be liked fuels the film’s central character, Kurt Kunkle (played by Joe Keery), who leverages even the most mundane real life interactions for digital ones.
Seeing his platform (known as Kurt’s World) hemorrhaging subscribers, Kurt becomes a Spree driver and decides to stream his day as a way to lure back his audience. He quickly learns, however, that his once-thriving viewership is just not interested 一 even Bobby (Joshua Ovalle), a kid he used to babysit, sees through his veneer and calls him out on his feeble attempts. Bobby, firmly Gen Z, sees Kurt’s pathetic behavior indicative of the aging millennial generation, barely clinging onto faux authenticity and old ways of digital curation. He has his own problems, too; his own digital empire is all in illusion.
There’s no sustainability when the goalposts constantly recalibrate and the glass ceiling rises higher and higher. Thresholds that once gave a satisfying dopamine injection are no longer effective, and you must push further and higher to get the same level of pleasure. It makes sense when you really think about it. It operates just as traditional drugs do.
“Social media is basically a way to drugify human connection,” Anna Lembke, MD, psychiatry professor and Chief of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, observed in a deeply-probing Teen Vogue report last year. “We’ve evolved over millions of years to want to connect with people because it helps us protect ourselves from predators, use scarce resources, find a mate. One of the ways our brain gets us to make those connections is [to] release dopamine.”
‘Spree’
From Kurt’s perspective, the only way to get that same high again is to double-down on the antics at whatever cost necessary. He’s even willing to commit murder, if he has to, and boy does he ever. He has it all planned out in his head: he’ll live-stream his shift, pick up as many passengers as he can, and offer them drug-laced water bottles. What’s most disturbing is he is completely transparent in his live feeds, yet no one takes him seriously. It all happens in plain sight, but the world is so self-absorbed and addicted to their own dopamine chase they don’t even read (or understand) the signs.
He first poisons a real estate agent (Jessalyn Gilsig) and later drives a group of rich kids out to a secluded spot before slaughtering them in gruesome fashion. It’s the name of the game, and the game is murder for subscribers. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. Kurt goes one step further and confronts Bobby at his house. In a heated conversation, he stabs Bobby and assumes his account and the massive following it entails, claiming the deadly scuffle was a prank. Throughout the rest of the night, Kurt spirals further out of control (if you can believe that), and he’s only stopped when another prominent influencer Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), the single most honest, real person in the entire film, deals him a deadly blow.
The same Teen Vogue report later cuts to the heart of the matter. By design, social media is meant to “influence and manipulate your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors” and that often involves greatly exacerbating mental illness. In the extreme case of Kurt Kunkle, his world became about equating value as a human being to what people said about him online and how they mindlessly flocked to his account. And it was never about what he could bring to the world or even the joy that he may have once had for his content. It’s a dehumanizing system that repeats.
Christensen approaches these issues through a slightly different lens. Superhost follows two popular vloggers, Claire (Sara Canning) and Teddy (Osric Chau), our anti-heros who become consumed alive by the system they once exploited. Their content centers around traveling the country and taking up residence in various Airbnb rentals, detailing their experience, and then giving a rating. Many of their video reviews have gone viral and led to a fairly lucrative living. However, they’ve experienced a recent dip in both viewership and subscribers. They begin to feel the heat to deliver top-notch content, and the lengths they’ll go to be controversial test their bounds as creators and human beings.
Their previous experience with a woman named Vera (Barbara Crampton) brought a new host of unwanted problems. Their scathing assessment directly contributed to Vera’s own business crumbling, suggesting how online activity, no matter how small, can have a dangerous outward ripple effect. And all it takes is one erroneous tweet or Instagram post or TikTok video and someone’s life is ruined.
‘Superhost’
But Claire and Teddy hope to turn things around.
They’ve finally managed to book a secluded cabin from a seemingly normal young woman named Rebecca (Grace Gillam). The vacation rental is quite the hot spot, requiring a reservation months ahead of time. Only woods and mountains surround them, and it could be the place that gets them back on track. When Claire and Teddy arrive, they immediately start filming the trip, pouring on the overly dramatic reactions and obvious on screen personas on thick. It’s like a peek at the wizard behind the curtain. Streaming is all smoke and mirrors 一 and behind the camera, it’s two people desperately wanting to be liked.
Everything immediately starts going sideways. First, they have the wrong door code to get into the rental, and then, the primary toilet appears clogged. It’s all downhill from there. A toothy smile and wild eyes, Rebecca always appears a little off, almost as if she is some modernized pod person. Much like her new occupants, there’s always a façade behind which she moves through the world. She attempts to give them the best possible trip with little fuss, but everything comes unglued in the third act.
Rebecca is the highly concentrated version of Claire and Teddy. When all is revealed that she’s actually a serial killer, who slaughtered and hid the bodies of the property’s actual owners, she flips the tables on the vlogger team and films their deaths. In Claire’s final moments, she’s managed to upload a video pleading with her subscribers for help 一 but everyone believes it’s just another stunt. Looking on, blood dripping down her face, Rebecca simply smirks into the laptop camera. It’s a downright chilling turn of events that drives home the entire film’s thesis.
What people want more than anything on social media is transparency 一 not authenticity. Authenticity is one of those loaded buzzwords that don’t actually mean anything these days. Claire and Teddy were two mice on a wheel, chasing imaginary cheese and going nowhere. Their exploitation of real life 一 Teddy secretly plotting the trip as an engagement announcement, and Claire not even believing his sincerity 一 is not far removed from our own.
Each of us are manipulating ourselves into sharing and posting every thought that runs through our heads; and it’s not totally our fault, platforms are built to be addicting. We engage 24/7 because we just want to be liked. From Facebook’s reaction panel to quote RTs and Insta Stories, we compartmentalize our moments and feelings into easily digestible chunks and then only exist to feed the machine until nothing about it is human anymore.
Much like many Black Mirror episodes, Spree and Superhost capture the disastrous present and the downward trajectory we’re not likely to escape. Where Kurt Kunkle, Rebecca, and Claire and Teddy reside on opposing extremes, we’re all comfortably occupying a slot somewhere on the sliding scale. And hopefully, none of us have exploited tragedy (think Logan Paul and that gross “suicide forest” video) or committed murder. There’s still time for the rest of us, I suppose.
Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.
‘Superhost’
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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