The Big Picture

Scared Shitless
is a dumb, goofy horror comedy that delivers absurd, entertaining ridiculousness in a compact runtime.
The film focuses on a plumber and his germophobe son battling a toilet monster in an apartment complex filled with murders.
The strongest aspect is the bond between father and son, but the film feels stretched due to a singular focus on gruesome kills.

Just when you thought it was safe to use the toilet, Scared Shitless comes along to make us fear what is within the porcelain potty. Written by Brandon Cohen, who also wrote the 2021 short of the same name, and directed by Vivieno Caldinelli (Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss), Scared Shitless is about as absurd as its name suggests, following the hunt for a monster lurking in the bathroom. As a dumb, goofy horror comedy, the film knows what audiences want, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and gives viewers a quick bite of entertaining ridiculousness—nothing more, nothing less.

Scared Shitless (2024) A plumber and his germophobic son must save the residents of an apartment building when a genetically engineered, bloodthirsty creature escapes into the plumbing system. Directed by Vivieno Caldinelli, the film combines horror and dark comedy with a unique premise involving a monster in the pipes.Release Date July 21, 2024 Director Vivieno Caldinelli Cast Steven Ogg , Julian Richings , Mark McKinney , Chelsea Clark , Marcia Bennett , Daniel Doheny , Brynn Godenir , Marty Adams Runtime 76 Minutes

What Is ‘Scared Shitless’ About?
Image via Fantasia

Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead, Grand Theft Auto V) stars as Don, a plumber who takes pride in his work. His son Sonny (Brand New Cherry Flavor’s Daniel Doheny), is a germophobe with an easily upset stomach. Sonny’s mom recently passed to an unspecified germ-related issue, which has left Sonny even more on edge, and made Don and Sonny more reliant on each other. When Don gets a call about a plumbing problem, he decides to bring Sonny along to hopefully shake his son out of this mindset. However, Don has picked the worst night to try this approach.

Thanks to Dr. Robert (The Kids in the Hall’s Mark McKinney) bringing his “work” home with him in the form of a sluglike creature out for blood, the doctor’s apartment now has this creature lurking in the toilets. What seemed like it might be a fairly straightforward unclogging for Don and Sonny quickly becomes a fight to stay alive and help stop this creature before the entire apartment complex has been murdered.

‘Scared Shitless’ Keeps Its Story to the Basics, but Maybe It Shouldn’t Have

Scared Shitless keeps its disgusting story to the bare bones. There’s no reason to give answers for what happened to Don’s wife, or where this slug monster comes from. What matters is gross-out humor and bonkers kills, which the film delivers on. For the most part, the monster’s victims are just that and little more. We learn the bare minimum about these people, because why bother? A giant toilet worm is going to eat them eventually anyway.

This is why the strongest aspect of Scared Shitless is the bond between father and son in Don and Sonny. In our introduction to these characters, we understand the relationship that has formed between them. For example, as Don cooks dinner for the two of them, he blasts his classic rock, while Sonny tries to blare the TV’s sound to drown out his dad’s music. These two battle it out sonically, yet it’s all out of good fun and not irritation with the other. Don is genuinely considerate of his son’s concerns with germs, attempting to do what’s best for him, and trying to assure him that what happened to Sonny’s mother won’t happen to him. For a film that seemingly just wants to get to the murders, without worrying about the details too much, this sequence focused on these two and building them up as characters makes all the difference.

But while Scared Shitless works when father and son are together, it sort of falls apart at times when they aren’t. When Don and Sonny are together, Don shows the utmost joy in his work, taking care to show Sonny the importance of what he hopes will become the family business. Yet late in the film, when Don goes off to help a single woman in the apartment, his charming, genial approach to the job fades away and he becomes slightly more unpleasant in his handling of customers. Similarly, Scared Shitless eventually teams Sonny up with Patricia (Chelsea Clark), who runs the apartment, and the dynamic just isn’t as intriguing as when Don and Sonny were together. In fact, in these moments apart from each other, Don and Sonny almost feel like entirely different characters than what we’ve seen up to this point.

‘Scared Shitless’ Is Still Gross-Out Fun
Image via Fantasia

Scared Shitless’ direct approach to the monster movie is both a blessing and a curse of sorts. After setting up Don and Sonny, the film gets right down to business, filling toilets with blood and clogging them with disgusting chunks of bodily remnants. For those just wanting gruesome kills, this is the movie for you. But because of this singular focus, the film also is unfortunately one-note. Even at just 71 minutes, Scared Shitless feels like it’s stretching its concept as much as humanly possible. We get plenty of moments where Don takes his time exploring how the business of plumbing works, or scenes drag out a simple concept for far too long, and it all feels like Cohen trying to write his way to a feature and barely making it across that finish line.

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As for the kills themselves, Caldinelli always films them in a way to enhance the campy silliness that one would want from a movie about a toilet monster. Unmentionable parts get ripped off, blood flies liberally, and people get sucked into the toilet—just as you’d hope for. Considering the very clear low budget on this project, Caldinelli makes the most bang for his buck. The monster legitimately looks good when we get clear glimpses of him, and Caldinelli knows, in typical Jaws fashion, that it’s likely more effective to show less than to constantly return to showing the monster in all its glory. This approach works, and leaves us longing for more of the monster, even if we know fairly on that it mostly looks like one of the tremors from Tremors mated with a xenomorph from Alien. It’s simple, but it gets the job done.

Scared Shitless knows exactly what it is and doesn’t attempt to pretend like a toilet monster movie is more than it seems on the surface. And yet, maybe it should? The best parts of this horror story are when the film takes the time to build up these characters and their journey, rather than just dumping us into an apartment of bloody destruction. Scared Shitless isn’t a waste, but it maybe should’ve given a bit more of a shit.

Scared Shitless (2024) Scared Shitless is a fairly straightforward gross-out horror film that maybe should’ve spent some more time on the details.ProsScared Shitless is at its best when it’s a story of a father and son trying to work their way through one crazy night.The creature design and violence are surprisingly well done, given the clear budgetary restrictions. ConsConsidering how well the father and son are fleshed out, it’s a shame the film didn’t take that same care with the rest of the film.

Scared Shitless had its World Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.