Ethan Newton (Aiden Howard) is a podcaster who doesn’t just track down true crime stories; he also reveals the lousy police work and abuse that happens along the way. Perhaps that doesn’t make him very popular, but he feels he has a mission to expose things. One evening, after recording his latest episode, he gets a call from Seattle, the home he left behind. His sister is dead. Now, the world of true crime is more accurate and personal than it ever has been before.

After spending some time there and reconnecting with his estranged mother, Ethan discovers that the cops missed a cipher in his sister’s apartment, which leads him to the dark web—ominous music, please—and the Murdershow, a live killing floor that his sister Amanda “Mandy” Newton (Lauren Jackson) and her friend Kate (Kimi Alexander) watched once in their battle to scare one another.

It turns out that this dark web group is run by clowns who look like they stepped out of The Purge or The Strangers wearing generic Spirit store Slipknot costumes — indeed, you can buy the Twisty the Clown, Dollmaker and Doxy masks from this movie on Trick or Treat Studios which claim this movie was actually made in 2020, because they’re on clearance — who took Mandy, crucified her and then sliced her up with a chainsaw while they lived in a haunted house that looks like it’s sponsored by Hot Topic. Also, much of this movie feels like it happened sometime in the 2000s.

Of course, the cops — like Detective Sawchuk (Josh Blacker) — are no help, but they all hate Ethan and his show. So he has to go into business for himself, working with Kate (Kimi Alexander), who he’s always had a crush on, and his hacker friend Shadow (Brendan Fletcher).

It turns out that the news reports in the beginning that this is a death cult are accurate, and soon, Ethan and Kate know way more than they ever wanted to know about the Murdershow.

So many moments in this movie feel like they are taken whole cloth from Ed Piskor’s comic book Red Room, even calling the room such. I know that these urban legends have been around before the comic, but between the chat windows and what people are saying within the room, as well as having people pledge crypto to watch people die, it’s a bit too close to be a coincidence.

There’s also a not-so-shocking twist ending that really feels more like the expected ending, but you know that going into straight-to-streaming horror these days, right?

I don’t really want to speak ill of the dead, as director and writer Dan Zachary died on New Year’s Eve of last year after a brief and unexpected illness. He also made American Conjuring, Mortal Remains and Darkest Hour.

This is rather polished for a Tubi Original, but if there’s one mean thing I can say, they should have given Aiden Howard a few more takes for his funeral scenes. It might be amongst the worst emoting I’ve seen, and I exist on a steady diet of Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.