Movies
Introducing [Trailer Tracks] Dissecting ‘The Helpers’ Trailer!
Movie commercials offer us a great service; they not only show us which upcoming movies look good, but also which ones to avoid. And if one looks closely, they often reveal more than intended about the film in question. In honor of this profound art, I give you TRAILER TRACKS, an examination of upcoming movie commercials: What they say, what they don’t say, and what they say on accident about the product being sold to you, the excited chump.
Today’s entry:
The Helpers (Dir. Chris Stokes)
Introduction
If you were looking for a half-assed iterations of the tired Found Footage genre and the tired Torture Porn genre only with really lame, pedestrian looking villains, you came to the right place. This movie trailer doesn’t just copy genres; it gets steals with specifics, using a clear Sheri Moon Zombie stand-in as well as Platinum Dunes’ dusty visual aesthetic, not to mention the crowbar bit at the end which totally cops from the Friday the 13th remake. This is one derivative movie.
The Setup
A bunch of young folk are on their way to Las Vegas (even if you don’t speak English or know anything about America, you should know movie characters are going to Vegas if they suddenly start cheering and woo-ing in a moving vehicle, and they are not children). The grim and gritty title card tells us there are seven of them — a blonde couple, a dark-haired couple, a black couple, and an annoying nerd (found-footage cameraman). They, uh, don’t make it to Vegas. Vegas, uh, does not miss them.
The Problem
Whether by hick trap or legit accident, the Vegasmobile gets a flat tire, and the seven pretty young people seek aid from the closest car garage/hotel/karaoke bar they can find. Things seem nice at first. The establishment is filled with a bunch of helpful and interesting looking Hipster Hicks who would be played by Jeremy Davies and John Hawks and Garret Dillahunt if this movie really were made by Platinum Dunes. Everyone gets drunk and sings “I Will Survive” and only the chorus of TLC’s “Waterfalls” until it gets late, at which time they all go to hotel rooms.
Unfortunately, the hotel rooms appear to be high tech kill boxes. Even more unfortunately, they all have security cameras, through which The Helpers will apparently force us to watch most of the good stuff (kind of reminiscent of Cabin in the Woods). Given that there are only seven protagonists (that we know of) and we witness them in various forms of dead, we can consider this a pretty spoiler-filled trailer. We know something really awful and wet-sounding happens to the dark-haired girl while her boyfriend watches. The black lady dies in a bathtub, and her boyfriend dies sitting in a chair right next to her. We even see the blonde girl get killed in the face with a crowbar (although, just like the Friday the 13th moment The Helpers is lifting here, this could ultimately be a fakeout).
But we don’t see the nerd, which means something special must happen to him. He may provide the film with its shocking first death. Or he may hobble along helping the final girl along with his superior nerd knowledge until he ultimately sacrifices himself. Or he may himself be the final girl and live all the way to the end. It’s impossible to say from the trailer. (Please God, let it be option number one.)
The Solution
Despite giving so much away, the third act of this film remains mysterious. Depending on whether this is an 80 minute horror film or a 100 minute horror film, we might get stuck learning a bit of the killers’ backstory — the concept of being “Helpers” and how they came up with it. We do know some wrinkle is coming because we hear one of the three females in the group place a call to 911. The question is whether this phone call arrives early or late in the film and if it actually matters.
In other promotional materials, the film purports to have been based on a true story, so the climax may be more simple than most horror fans are looking for. Then again, some pretty crazy horror films have supposedly been based on true stories as well, and that didn’t stop them from going nuts when the time came. What I’m saying is, I doubt this one will end with all the Hipster Hicks getting arrested or anything boring like that, but it’s something to keep in mind when setting your own expectations.
Actually, I can see this film’s ending a mile away. After making that 911 call, the lone survivor girl will be saved by these gals:
The Helpers will fight The Help. Personally, I don’t think The Helpers stand a chance. They all look like vegetarians.
Summation
This could be a decent entry in the Torture Porn category, since the kills appear halfway intriguing. The found footage aspect, however, looks tacked on and stupid, and the only hope I can derive from it is an outside chance that it’s being meta, which is really just a different flavor of annoying.
My main fear is that the awful song featured over and over again in this trailer will be as omnipresent in the film. If so, The Helpers might achieve a nearly 3D representation of audience torture to match the terror onscreen. The film will be released “Soon,” so it won’t be much longer before we can all see for ourselves. Personally, I’m dying to know what’s going on with all those ropes, that bucket, and the bathtub.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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