Studio: Shudder
Director: Various
Writer: Various
Producer: Aaron B. Koontz, Cameron Burns, Alex Euting, Shawn Talley, Ashleigh Snead, Kris Phipps
Stars: Various
Review Score:
Summary:
Seven stories tell tongue-in-cheek tales of typical horror movie tropes going unexpectedly haywire.
Review:
“Scare Package” wears its indie origins on its sleeve. Tinted by the telltale patina of a shot-on-digital sheen, it visually looks only a notch or two above the DIY dross you’d expect to bear an Uncork’d Entertainment or Wild Eye Releasing logo. Noah Segan qualifies as the most notable actor, and a few other familiar faces show up too, although a majority of the 90+ names in the cast are total unknowns whose IMDb entries don’t even have headshots.
Just when rash first impressions might have you reaching to flick the switch on the DTV disposal, “Scare Package” quite quickly shows where its real appeal resides. As a humorous horror anthology based around taking a torch to tired fright film tropes, the film burns a hot brand with witty writing and gonzo gore whose fun-filled attitudes easily overshadow pesky technical shortcomings.
The clever thing about “Scare Package” is that setups aren’t based on generic gags where hollow “didja ever notice?” observations are mentioned so as to seem slickly in the know, but then left to wither without actually doing anything original. Yeah yeah, we already know all the bits about token minorities dying first, eerie old men foretelling doom, Indian burial grounds, etc. Thanks to filmmakers who are simultaneously cynical yet celebratory about the genre they affectionately satirize, “Scare Package” digs for deeper cuts concerning chestnut clichés and mines cutting comedy to go with its geyser gushes of soupy splatter.
This is evidenced off the bat in the first chapter, “Cold Open.” Bucking convention, “Scare Package” opts to not save the best for last by starting with writer/director Emily Hagins’ outstandingly sly contribution. Hagins, whose talent for quirky horror continues advancing at a faster rate than her recognition, takes smart swings at overlooked terror tale contrivances that aren’t as commonly skewered with her story of a different ‘Michael Myers.’
Being someone whose job involves creating the clichés that kick off many movies, Mike feels unfulfilled in his career. He desperately aches to do something more than rolling the arrow on a road sign pointing to an abandoned asylum, planting satanic relics in attics, or steering new homeowners away from newspaper clippings regarding horrific events that occurred on their property. Mike gets his chance when he decides to see what happens if he sticks around after cutting the power to a house where two girls are babysitting on Halloween night. Naturally, a twisty line of unlikely dominos subsequently drops.
Second segment “One Time in the Woods” highlights the film’s foaming fervor for goofily goopy effects. Some horror parodies think it’s enough to go hardcore on excessive buckets of blood. Other indies embarrassingly make do with cheap Halloween store appliances. “One Time in the Woods” has far more creativity than that. Its centerpiece creature resembles an odd combination of Pizza the Hutt and Paul McCrane from “Robocop” slathered in various BBQ sauces and sinewy cheese strings. It’s delightfully disgusting, both ridiculous and revolting at the same time, which is a description that applies to a lot of “Scare Package’s” style.
Something that doesn’t work in the segment’s favor is some amateur acting, which is also an observation applicable to more than one short in the film. “Scare Package” wants plenty of fat on its comedic ham. However, the wooden inexperience exhibited by many newbies ends up accentuated by not having the skill set to toe a delicate line between exaggerated caricature and over-the-top obnoxiousness. In “One Time in the Woods,” the guy playing the biker sorely stands out as being on a different weirdo wavelength than everyone else. This pimply head of ensemble inconsistency pokes out of its shell on multiple occasions throughout the movie.
Noah Segan’s “M.I.S.T.,E.R.,” and that first comma is not a typo, demonstrates that “Scare Package” takes more than just horror to task. Snickers come easily when one tough guy at a 12-step talks about taking up the sidewalk so he can feel strong by not getting out of someone’s way. Segan means to send up misogyny with his fable about emasculated men reclaiming alpha attitudes. Unfortunately, one foot trips after the other when two twists fail to pack the piece with biting commentary on the topic. “M.I.S.T.,E.R.” thus fizzles as the film’s first short to fall flat.
“Girls Nite Out of Body” doesn’t do much better, primarily because it’s conceptually simplistic compared to what other segments attempt and accomplish. “Girls Nite Out of Body” might also be trying to grease the lens with a retro look that merely makes many shots appear eye-wateringly out of focus.
“The Night He Came Back Again Part IV: The Final Kill” rights the boat’s listing with a slasher spoof trotting through familiar ground about unkillable masked maniacs, Final Girls, and their unfortunate friends. However, the short has such spirit and puts so much thought into its bloody deaths that it delivers grin-worthy entertainment even as it recycles a redundant joke for a specific effect.
“So Much to Do” returns “Scare Package” to wobbly rails with Baron Vaughn’s undercooked possession tale meant to mangle the annoying frustration of spoiler culture. Here we see the drawback of “Scare Package” being an assembly of multiple creators unified by a theme, but not by a consistent approach to tone. “So Much to Do” shows that “Scare Package’s” less satisfying shorts aren’t underwhelming because they are poorly produced. They just seem slight when paired alongside superior segments that go all out with energetic imagination while others contentedly coast on flippancy.
As the wraparound, “Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium” offers mildly amusing banter between segments by seemingly building to bigger payoffs. It doesn’t though. It provides a simpler service as what turns out to be a prologue for “Horror Hypothesis,” which ties up “Scare Package” by biting out a full half hour of the 103-minute runtime.
“Horror Hypothesis” plugs standard stereotypes into a situation reminiscent of “Cabin in the Woods.” Scientists force captives including a jock, a virgin, a horror know-it-all “like Randy from ‘Scream’,” and so on to participate in various simulations as they investigate horror clichés like they’re abstract mathematical theories. Why do cars always malfunction when a killer stands within 14 meters of one? How often will one woman trip while being pursued by a stalker?
“Horror Hypothesis” hits some low-hanging potshots, but aims up to hit higher targets too. Co-writers Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns, two of the key people behind “Scare Package” as a project, even put new miles on the “black characters die first” myth by adding a sensitivity twist where Rad Chad repeatedly doesn’t feel comfortable pointing out the race-based trope. Like “Scare Package” overall, much more of the meta-humor in “Horror Hypothesis” works well than doesn’t work at all. Some of it may not even be intentional, like Chase Williamson essentially parodying himself by playing the stoned slacker he seems to be in every other Chase Williamson role.
The best anthologies are perfect or near perfect all the way through. That’s a rare honor reserved for confirmed classics like “Creepshow.”
It’s more realistic to measure modern horror anthologies according to total sums that exceed the varied values of their parts. No different than any creepily comedic collection of shorts, “Scare Package” misses marks here and there. But the movie’s inventiveness and irreverence predominantly mix an intoxicating cocktail of winking laughs and gruesome shocks that’s consistently enjoyable for horror fans with light senses of humor and forgiving tastes for low-budget larks.
Review Score: 75
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.