'Into the Dark: Pooka Lives' Review: Fresh spin on old horror with a dash of comedy makes it worth a watch
Spoilers for 'Into the Dark: Pooka Lives'
As if the lockdown season wasn't hard enough, Blumhouse and Hulu's anthology horror brainchild 'Into the Dark's latest installment brings back one of its most striking elements of horror: Pooka, the children's toy. But the sequel to the 2018 December episode 'Pooka', titled 'Pooka Lives' is more than just a second part. This time, the story is different, the characters are new and Pooka is a whole lot real with an identity of its own.
Imagine being locked up in your own house with your kid's Pooka doll and suddenly the furry rabbit type toy comes to life with a thirst for vengeance. How timely. Add to that a dash of satirical spin on contagious internet challenges and voila, you have your April installment.
This time, the Pooka nightmare doesn't surround a struggling actor wearing the toy as a costume for children's parties and sudden mysterious murders starting to happen around him. This story revolves around a disgraced writer, who moves to his hometown after getting canceled by the internet. Once reunited with his old friends, the group creates a fake Pooka challenge for laughs which the writer, Derrick (Malcolm Barett), accidentally ends up posting on the internet.
The challenge's inception lies in the original Pooka legend where the creator of the children's toy lost her mind and ended up stabbing her husband while wearing the Pooka mask. She then lit herself on fire and burned down the whole house that was filled with Pooka toys — as we see at the beginning of the episode. So, of course, the Pooka spirit is an ominous one filled with vengeance and for all the blood and gore that's become a staple for 'Into the Dark', what really makes this sequel become one of the greatest installments by the show is its comedic timing.
Bringing in the concept of Tulpas — a type of a voluntary imaginary friend considered to be sentient and relatively autonomous — the episode weaves Pooka's bloodthirst around the bunch of friends whose responses to the nightmare are pretty funny.
From making fun of Pooka's ass getting kicked to making fun of each other for not standing a chance against Pooka — the humor jumps out more than the jump scares. Even in moments where after a whole 20 minutes of fighting the Pooka spirit, when it finally gets shot by a friend who recently got ripped, all the other friends can say is: "Damn, he's so f***ing hot." That's the kind of James Franco slash Seth Rogen-esque humor this episode is laden with. Something that really works in its case because it doesn't strive to topple the horrifying drama of the original.
In the end, all the Pooka toys come loose amidst punk rock playing in the background as the group of friends team up to fight them off. The picturization turns from live-action to animated at the end credits for the funny, bloody horror that is 'Pooka Lives', making for a unique aftertaste even when the feature-length sequel is over.
'Into the Dark: Pooka Lives' premieres on Friday, April 3, only Hulu.