Movies
[Telluride Horror Show Review] ‘Scare Package’ is a Horror-Comedy Anthology That Gives Us the Goods
Horror comedies are tricky, and horror anthologies are tricky. Horror-comedy anthologies, then, make for an extra thorny endeavor, one with booby traps around every corner. Is the scary-to-funny ratio in check? Does the wraparound device tie in every piece while also working on its own merits? Is there a weak link segment that will be relegated to the default bathroom break?
Scare Package, from writers and directors Aaron B. Koontz, Courtney Andujar and Hillary Andujar, Anthony Cousins, Emily Hagins, Chris McInroy, Noah Segan and Baron Vaughn, takes on just such a thorny endeavor and succeeds with brio. It’s got seven segments and a wraparound, and I’ll be damned if each entry isn’t hilarious and disgusting in its own right. Okay, Scare Package is never quite scary, but it’s gross as hell – slimy, sticky and squirty practical effects are provided by Satanic Panic and Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich’s Tate Steinsiek – and there are no easy bathroom breaks in this anthology. You may not miss a jump scare that will stay with you once your head hits the pillow, but you’ll definitely miss a couple dozen laughs or so.
First, we’ve got the aptly titled “Cold Open,” by My Sucky Teen Romance’s Hagins, and it’s a meta-meets-meta puzzle box chuckler about a horror film stock background character who aspires to more. Then we’re introduced to the framing device, Koontz’s “Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium,” which takes us into a video rental store run by a Joe Bob-aping horror obsessive whose tapes make up each segment. “One Time in the Woods” started as a short that premiered at Telluride Horror Show last year, and the gooey camping trip gone awry by We Summoned a Demon’s McInroy fits right into the whole, with some of the funniest and grossest gags Scare Package has to offer. Longtime genre actor Segan (Looper, The Mind’s Eye, Starry Eyes) has his directorial debut with “M.I.S.T.E.R.,” a twisty, progressive take on the typically dude-heavy monster movie. Acclaimed production designers Courtney and Hillary Andujar (Girl on the Third Floor, Body at Brighton Rock) give us “Girls’ Night Out of Body,” an entry that belongs, as Rad Chad’s emporium tells us, squarely on the “post-modern feminist slasher body horror” shelf. Cousins’ channels the slasher sequel in “The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill,” and Vaughn creates a CW series-within-a-segment I’m dying to see in his snarky take on spoiler culture “So Much To Do.” Finally, Camera Obscura’s Koontz (who guided the overall production of the film) returns for Scare Package’s extremely satisfying Cabin in the Woods-riffing conclusion, “Horror Hypothesis.”
That’s a lot, right? And yet it doesn’t feel like it when you’re watching Scare Package. Each segment rolls neatly into the next, with every filmmaker maintaining a unique but cohesive tone that keeps the film fun, propulsive and easy to watch. There’s a diverse array of perspectives here, and the anthology feels fresher and more inclusive than many of its ilk. It is, as Koontz laughingly pointed out in his intro, ridiculously self-aware, but never obnoxiously so. Yeah, Scare Package is gory and silly as hell, but this is a movie made by people who love horror movies for people who love horror movies. It’s charmingly aware of the tropes that make up the genre it cherishes, and it leans into them with heart, blood, entrails and laughs. You’ll have a good time with Scare Package – and you should hit up the bathroom beforehand, because you won’t find any weak links here.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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