Fantasia 2024 Review: SCARED SHITLESS, A Creature Feature Worth Taking The Plunge

A friend of mine, an astute and well travelled film-lover, once told me their ‘big theory’ of audience engagement for most movies: The viewer will like the movie more if the main character is simply good at doing their job. In Scared Shitless, Don the plumber is not only great at his profession, but also deeply enthusiastic about its problem solving aspects, clearing a clog, finding its source, doing the job right. In his experience, "Fix one problem, and two more can bubble up." Well that along with, "shit happens." 
 

This is all-too-painfully evident by the recent, sudden, death of Don’s wife from a rare stomach bug. The  loss has turned his only son into a shut-in, and a panicky germaphobe. In the spirit of playing the hand that he was dealt, Don decides to bring his reluctant, Pepto-Bismol (or rather, the generic Costco retailed, Bismuth) guzzling Sonny, along for some tough love. To get his son out of his shell by teaching him the family business under the optimistic belief that in fact, most germs make you stronger. Little do Don and Sonny suspect that their first job on a quiet Toronto summer long weekend, that a genetically engineered bioweapon beastie, a toothy little slug-thing, has taken up residence in the apartment building septic system. 

 

Surprisingly light on the eponymous excrement, but delightfully heavy on 1980s era practical effects, Vivieno Caldinelli’s Scared Shitless is a fun little Canadian creature feature with a watertight screenplay, and a surprisingly sophisticated (given the subject matter, and the sub-genre) sense of comic timing.

 

While it lacks the (relatively) larger budgets, and thus scope, of the stalwart ‘creature lifecycle’ classics of the era it is referencing — namely, Tremors, Gremlins, Night of the Creeps, Alien, and The Thing — it more than makes up the gap with precise performances from its very game ensemble cast, including Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead), Mark McKinney (The Kids in the Hall) and Julian Richings (doing a kind of slimier reprise of the cold-open from Cube), all of whom know what kind of movie they are in. They often, generously, turn things over to the films younger leads, Daniel Doheny (who plays Sonny) and helpful building concierge Patricia, Chelsea Clark (Degrassi: The Next Class). It turns out that once together, they are not afraid to get their hands dirty.

 

Add in some super CanCon needle drops, and the icky creature workshop creations of Canadian national treasure, Steven Kostanski (note clips from Kostanski's stop-motion dystopian Mortal Kombat opus, ManBorg make a cameo here as well), and you have a movie, like Don himself, that tends to under promise, and over-deliver.

Content not to just rest on the creature gags, a few loving nods to the classics, and plethora of goopy kills of the residents of the Palmer Estates, director Vivieno Caldinelli and writer Brandon Cohen invest a lot of care in the quality of the visual storytelling and humour. Intentional camera work often drives the comedy, as much as joke callbacks, character payoffs, and commitment of the actors, even in the tiniest of parts. You simply know all around good filmmaking when you see it. Everyone involved in Scared Shitless is very good at their job. The result is a great time at the movies.