Scared Shitless (2024) Review

Following the death of his mother, the grief-related anxiety of Sonny Donahue (Daniel Doheny) is manifesting itself as an extreme phobia of germs. Concerned that this fear is going to ruin Sonny’s life, dad Don (Steven Ogg) decides that it’s time for Sonny to participate in the family plumbing business, hoping that Sonny will be able to overcome his fears if he faces up to literally getting his hands dirty.

Don and Sonny’s first team-up is a job at an apartment block called The Palmer Estate, where kindly Mrs. Appelbaum is having trouble with a blocked toilet. However, the drain-clearing duo will soon find themselves with far more to deal with as the building is also playing host to Professor Robert (Mark McKinney), a government scientist who has sneaked a top-secret experiment into the place after an explosion and subsequent fire has destroyed his lab. Surely the experiment is perfectly safe in the Professor’s flat. It’s not going to break out and start eating the residents, is it? Spoiler: it is.

Directed by Vivieno Caldinelli, who previously helmed – deep breath – Seven Stages To Achieve Eternal Bliss By Passing Through The Gateway Chosen By The Holy Storsh, featuring juicy, practical effects supervised by Astron 6 alumnus Steven Kostanski (also serving as one of the Executive Producers) and boasting Kids In The Hall icon McKinney among its cast members, it shouldn’t be difficult to imagine the level of wackiness and gruesomeness on display.

Scared Shitless doesn’t hang around in terms of monster action, having the critter causing chaos pretty much from minute one and then attacking the unfortunate Palmer population at regular intervals. Its preferred method? Sneaking up the U-bend and violating its target while they’re sitting on the toilet, pondering life’s mysteries or just responding to the natural urge of “when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.” Over the course of an evening, a few of these folks will be gone permanently.

Centring the main thrust of the story on its father/son team up, the leads play off each other in consistently amusing fashion. Ogg’s attempts to show his softer side to the twitchy, dirt-averse Doheny steer away from the usual macho comedy clichés and there’s a sweetness to the pairing which wraps a warm glow around the proceedings – when people are not having their guts sucked out of them, that is.

Doheny, with his air of perma-panic and a seemingly endless supply of a “pink bismuth” drink he chugs on every other minute in order to settle his stomach, keeps the character of Sonny the right side of annoying, especially when a potential romance comes his way in the shape of night manager Patricia (Chelsea Clark), who becomes the voice of reason when a certain substance hits the fan. And other areas of the bathroom.

The screenplay by Brandon Cohen, who also wrote the previous short of the same name, doesn’t force the laughs and relies upon the natural talents of its cast to keep a smile on the viewer’s face – when people are not having their guts sucked out of them, that is. That said, the gore sequences will be OTT enough to induce guilty chuckles in a great many of us. The monster design is both inventive and hilarious in its gnarly appearance and you can almost feel the slime oozing from the screen.

Considering the trim runtime, supporting roles are given due consideration, including Brynn Godenir as cam girl Lauren and, most strikingly, Donald Tripe and Lorna Wilson as lovely old couple Hugh and Marjorie whose formal dinner etiquette gives way to a session of them being utterly nasty in the bedroom. Hey, it made me snort laugh and it’s good to see the more senior figures in society giving the younger crowd a run for their money in the sexual deviancy department. Did I just type that?

From the above, it’s clear that the good ship Subtlety didn’t just sail a long time ago, it never came close to the Scared Shitless port but who cares? If the sound of Don enjoying a dish of matzo balls directly after a close-up of another, quite different set of balls tickles your funny bone, you will enjoy this film. It may be slight, it may be ridiculous, but it makes the most of its resources and it rarely fails to entertain, even if you’ve forgotten it all an hour later.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely that Scared Shitless will frighten that particular product out of you – it doesn’t really try, to be fair – but it’s an undeniably fun ride and any movie that has one of its players watching Manborg on a TV in the background deserves a little extra love. Ogg and Doheny make an engaging double act and a mid-credit sting suggests a potential second, larger mission for the plumbing partnership, which I would not be the slightest bit averse to seeing.

Movie Rating:

Scared Shitless trailer