“The internet literally created a monster.”

Dating back to October 2018, Hulu and Blumhouse‘s “Into the Dark” has dedicated itself to unleashing a brand new holiday movie every single month, the anthology series thus far extracting horrors from holidays like Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, and Valentine’s Day, as well as more “deep cut” holidays like Daughter’s Day and the Ides of March. If you can think of a holiday off the top of your head, there’s probably an episode of “Into the Dark” to go along with it. In some cases, given how long the show has been running, there are even two different episodes for a single holiday. Like, for example, Christmas.

Both seasons of “Into the Dark” have featured Christmas-themed films, the first of which was Nacho Vigalondo’s Pooka! back in December 2018. In the film, a standout offering from the horror anthology series, a struggling actor takes on a seasonal holiday job as the mascot for the year’s hottest new toy, Pooka. Long story short, the actor’s life quickly descends into madness, and it’s ultimately revealed that the evil Pooka was, well, little more than a figment of a fractured mind’s imagination. Not that “Into the Dark” had ever been concerned with sequels, but Pooka! left virtually no room for any sort of follow-up; though the titular character did become the series’ very first homegrown “horror icon,” spawning a following all his own.

Given the popularity of Pooka, the character has been resurrected for this month’s Alejandro Brugués-directed Pooka Lives!, thus far the only film in the “Into the Dark” project that has a direct tie to a previous film from the series. It’s also the only one to break tradition and come up with its own holiday to tie into, the fictional Pooka Day. Not exactly a sequel to Pooka!, Brugués’ Pooka Lives! exists in a world where the Pooka doll is a mega popular children’s toy, created by a woman who eventually went mad and murdered her husband before setting herself on fire. That spooky backstory paves the way for Pooka becoming a viral internet meme, and what starts out as a Creepypasta-style hoax ultimately becomes very, very real.

Immediately establishing itself as something of a rebuke of internet “cancel culture,” the present-day events of Pooka Lives! begin with the introduction of Derrick (Malcolm Barrett), a writer who has been effectively “cancelled” by an internet mob out to destroy him. Fleeing New York City to escape the vitriol that’s been blowing up his phone and wreaking havoc on his mental state, Derrick returns to his hometown, where he reunites with childhood friends Matt (Jonah Ray) and Molly (Felicia Day). It’s during a late night drinking session, joined by other childhood friends Bennie (Gavin Stenhouse) and Susan (Lyndie Greenwood), that the gang hatches a plan to use the viral nature of internet message boards to create their own Momo-type character. And they find all the inspiration they need in the popular Pooka doll.

Pooka Lives!, scripted by Ryan Copple, is quite smart in the way it plucks the title character out of December 2018’s “Into the Dark” film and works overtime to firmly establish him as a bona fide horror icon for the internet age. No longer merely a children’s toy or a costume, Pooka has now morphed into a Slenderman-like creature with a lore and mythology all his own, and what’s most fun about the concept for Pooka Lives! is that it affords Blumhouse the opportunity to really play with the character and, in many ways, completely reinvent who and what he even is. The general gist of Pooka Lives! is that the power of the internet can literally create monsters if enough people believe in them, and throughout the film Pooka takes different forms based on different descriptions that have gained popularity on a Reddit-like message board. He’s cute and cuddly at first, but by the end of the film Pooka has been skinned of his fur, gaunt and looking more like a Wendigo than a stuffed animal.

It’s an interesting and clever approach to bringing Pooka back to life, and it’s precisely the sort of lore-building that’s going to allow the character to endure for many years to come. It was pretty clear right off the bat that Hulu had their own horror icon on their hands with Pooka, and it’s great to see them really digging in their heels and having some fun with the character. And Pooka Lives!, above all else, is indeed a whole lot of fun. Alejandro Brugués, known for the horror-comedy Juan of the Dead and the standout slasher segment of the anthology film Nightmare Cinema, is an absolute perfect fit for a movie such as this one, and he fully embraces the creepy-yet-whimsical nature of the doll at the center of the story.

It helps that Pooka Lives! has a bit more going for it than mere creature feature shenanigans, though it certainly has a good deal of those too. Copple’s script, laced with fun dialogue that the excellent cast uses to bring genuinely likable characters to life, has a bit of an angry edge to it, calling out the sort of toxic social media culture that continues to destroy lives on an almost daily basis. We eventually learn that Derrick’s career was tanked not because he did anything wrong but merely because he dared to write a book about social media influencers, drawing the ire of a top YouTuber in the process. Once he sics his legion of nearly a million followers onto Derrick, well, our hero pretty much has no choice but to head for the hills – ironically, it’s that same obnoxious influencer who Derrick later uses to spread the #PookaChallenge that ultimately ends up summoning forth a real-life nightmare demon.

The social commentary that Copple weaves into the script gives Pooka Lives! more depth than perhaps the tale even needed, allowing it to pitch perfectly reflect the time period it was made in and released into. The things we say on the internet have consequences, even if it may sometimes seem like we’re all just shouting silliness into the void. Is it so hard to imagine that we have the power to literally create monsters? Are we already doing just that?

If there’s one downside to Pooka Lives! it’s that the budget doesn’t quite allow for Brugués to get as wild as he presumably wanted to. Too much of Pooka’s gruesome handiwork is relegated to off-screen deaths, and the movie suffers from that pesky problem of cutting to the credits right when it’s flirting with the idea of going full-tilt with the concept. The final battle sequence plays out through end credits animation rather than live-action, and it seems pretty clear that the budget just didn’t allow for the movie to see itself through to its own conclusion. And while one could argue that leaving you wanting more isn’t exactly the worst crime a movie can commit, it’s nevertheless a bummer that such a bonkers finale is never actually shown. On the plus side, there’s plenty of room to continue the story in a potential follow-up film. And with a fun group of characters at the center of things, I’d love to see it.

A little bit creepy and a whole lot of fun, Pooka Lives! is further confirmation that there’s at least one thing about “Into the Dark” that will stay on the minds of fans for years to come.

And his name is Pooka.