Content Advisory: Animal cruelty or animal death, Excessive or gratuitous violence
This Review Was Originally Published as Part of Our Coverage of the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival
A plumber and his germophobe son discover a man-eating slug has invaded the septic system of an apartment complex in Scared Shitless!. Don (Steven Ogg) is the proprietor of Donahue Plumbing, who has been dealing with the fact that his son Sonny (Daniel Doheny) has been experiencing severe germophobia since the death of his mother. As a way to combat this Don makes Sonny an apprentice plumber for his next job fixing the toilet of Mrs. Applebaum (Marcia Bennett) at The Palmer Estate, the concierge of which, Patricia (Chelsea Clark), happens to be an old acquaintance of Sonny’s. However, living in the apartment is Dr. Robert (Mark McKinney), creator of “Project X,” an incredibly aggressive slug, which soon escapes into the apartment complex’s septic system.
Scared Shitless Synopsis
Scared Shitless is a creature horror-comedy directed by Vivieno Caldinelli (Portal to Hell) and written by Brandon Cohen, based on his 2021 short film of the same name. The film stars Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead, Dark Match) as Don, a plumber who finds himself dealing with a creature in the septic system of an apartment complex. The creator is the creation of Dr. Robert, played by Kids in the Hall‘s Mark McKinney, who brings Project X back to the complex after his lab is destroyed following an encounter with Professor Cummings (Julian Richings). However, this man-eating slug ends up escaping and travels through the building’s septic system, killing the residents in gruesome ways.
My Thoughts on Scared Shitless
Featuring creature effects work by Steven Kostanski (Manborg, Psycho Goreman, In a Violent Nature), Scared Shitless is an incredibly gory creature feature evocative of James Gunn’s Slither and Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob. This makes for a generally entertaining film, even though it could have used less gross-out toilet humour. At least this humour was limited to finding severed appendages in the septic system rather than making the title of Scared Shitless a literal description of the film.