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.
