With a name like Of Joy That Kills you’d think that this was a horror blog exclusively, but just because it isn’t, doesn’t mean we can’t indulge in shivers and scares when the moment calls for it. So, because I love horror, and in hopes that you do too, I’m happy to unveil the first ever and official horror film of the month: Pooka! Written by Gerald Olson and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, this psychological horror film from Blumhouse Television production stars Nyasha Hatendi.
“Pooka see. Pooka do. You never know what Pooka will do!”
If you haven’t been following along with Hulu’s Into The Dark anthology series, I assume it’s because you don’t have Hulu. [Really, that’s the only acceptable excuse.] The series began in October with The Body, which follows a top-tier hitman who somehow gets sidetracked by party goers while attempting to complete a job on Halloween night. In November, the series took on familial disfunction with the Thanksgiving themed film, Flesh and Blood. In this film, a teenage girl develops agoraphobia after the death of her mother, and consequently finds herself trapped at home with a father whose behavior slowly becomes more frighteningly suspicious. Both films had great intentions, and The Body certainly expressed potential with it’s comedic millennial charm and feminist nods, but neither was really a success; but as we are wont to say, the third time is the charm, and Pooka! proved to be the perfect Christmas-time scare.
The titular Pooka of Pooka! is inspired by the shapeshifting Púca of Celtic folklore. The few recorded stories of the Púca shift between malevolent and benevolent representation, making the supernatural being particularly mysterious in nature. The film’s Pooka is a furbie-like mechanical Christmas toy whose gimmick relies on a similar ambiguity. The doll records and repeats its owners using either a naughty or a nice mode. The catch? Only Pooka knows what it will repeat and which mode it will choose. Predicted to be the hot new toy of the season, the production company decides to cast just one actor to personify the Pooka for publicity stunts and at the holiday pop-up.
Enter Wilson. A lonesome, out-of-work actor, Wilson sees a casting flyer and decides to try out with Ebenezer Scrooge’s monologue from A Christmas Carol. During the audition, however, his monologue is cut short by requests to perform an odd set of motions: “Raise your arms up. Together like a triangle. Out like an offering. Fly like a plane.” Having successfully performed the choreography, he is offered the job directly. Though Wilson, a serious actor, seems hesitant about playing a simple mascot, the hefty salary prompts him to accept.
“I’m loosing time. I’m loosing control.”
The catch, of course, is in the mysterious nature of the suit. Though at first suffocating, the suit quickly becomes an irreplaceable appendage, and much like the Pooka toy itself, Wilson finds himself falling into the holiday dichotomy of naughty and nice. On the nice side, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful single mother, Melanie, and befriends the eccentric neighbor, Red. The two events pull him from isolation and show promise for his future. On the naughty side, he begins to experience blackouts as Pooka’s deviant and destructive personality takes over. As the periods of darkness increase and the people around him begin to suffer, Wilson starts to question his own sanity. Though he can’t trust the suit, he can’t seem to tear himself away from it either. So the question becomes: is the good Pooka really worth the horror of the bad one?
This dark holiday horror is a trip into the mysterious realms of the mind. As Wilson’s sanity unravels, you’ll find yourself just as lost, confused and frightened over the meaning of it all.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead.”
So, what does it all mean?
Now entering Spoilerville
Things certainly get weird as Pooka’s unpredictable behavior takes over Wilson’s life and split his personality, but it isn’t until the final act that the true meaning of Wilson’s obsession is revealed. In a dark version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Wilson is revealed to be a dying man retreating into his personal Scrooge-like fantasy. When he finally hits the rock bottom of his Pooka fantasy, he (and the audience) is finally able to witness the events that led Wilson into this bizarre alternate realm.
The real Wilson is a successful actor whose erratic behavior tears his family apart. On Christmas Eve, a fit against his wife who has threatened to leave him prompts Wilson to go-Hulk and tear the family’s Christmas tree apart with his bare hand. When he realizes that his son was watching, he shifts from angry to distraught and thus forces the family to go out in search of a perfect replacement. Still enraged with and distracted by his wife, who comforts their son in the back seat of the car, Wilson crashes into an oncoming vehicle. Thrown from the car, he is able to register his son’s Pooka doll repeating his wife’s last words, (“look at all the pretty lights”) as well as the victim in the other car (his kindly alt-life neighbor, Red), the flashing blue and red police lights (which form the predominant color scheme of his Dickensian fantasy), and an EMT (who plays the Pooka producer). Overwhelmed by the destruction, Wilson’s subconscious transports him into the realm of the Pooka film. There, he gets his “blank slate,” – a chance to indulge in the “lies [that] help you get through things.”
“I think I remember why I came here. So I could get away. Away from pain. Away from causing pain.”
In his alt-life vision, Wilson gets a second chance at being a good husband and father. In Wilson’s fantasy, Melanie leaves her husband on the fateful Christmas Eve and is therefore free to start over with the new Wilson. This, however, is where Pooka diverts from the Dickensian holiday tale. In Pooka, Scrooge can’t be saved. Rather, Wilson’s supernatural experience reimagines A Christmas Carol as a tragedy and Scrooge as a wretched figure bound by preordination. The key is in the timing. Whereas neither Scrooge nor Tiny Tim (in Pooka represented by Wilson’s wife and son) find themselves on death’s door in Dickens’ story, the real Wilson is dying and his family is presumably already dead. In the alt-reality, the inevitability of fate is predominately illustrated by Wilson’s obsessive relationship with the Pooka.
When we first meet alt-Wilson, he has isolated himself in order to keep from hurting others. To a similar purpose, his subconscious has also chosen to channel his
“Wilson, this is all you. One Pooka. One you.”
It is in the moment that Wilson chooses to wear Pooka that his fate is sealed. Though it is through Pooka that he finds Melanie and Ty, it is also through Pooka that the relationship falls apart. Mirroring his real life, in Wilson’s alt-life, his obsession with creating the perfect Christmas, regardless of Melanie’s protestations, lead to the disillusion of their relationship. This is, of course, the result of his dark metamorphosis via the Pooka suit. Significantly, even when Wilson begins to notice and fear what the Pooka is doing when he blacks out, he refuses to part with the costume. At this point, fate gives him another push by discontinuing the Pooka doll. Wilson’s reaction, however, is to steal the suit, feeling he can no longer exist without it. This obsession with continuing to play the Pooka even after losing the suit is symbolic of alt-Wilson’s inability to escape the real Wilson. Wilson is Pooka and Pooka is Wilson. As such, he cannot escape the consequences of his erratic and volatile behavior. The damage has been done and though as Red suggests, he can decide to “make good choices now,” Wilson’s Christmas Eve visions are not “the shadows of the things that May be only” but those of things that are now and things that have already been. Whether he survives the crash or not, his visions have shown that even when given the chance, his trajectory will always be the same. Wilson can’t help being Pooka, and Pooka, unlike Scrooge, is irredeemable.
Now leaving Spoilerville
Overall, I consider Pooka! a success of holiday horror. The tension of Wilson’s descent is well acted and the symbolic use of color and lighting create a bizarre and eerie mood. What’s more, if you can manage not to spoil yourself beforehand, the film will keep most viewers in the dark about its true meaning until the intended moment of revelation, despite several clues placed throughout. I definitely recommend watching the film this holiday season, and once you have, let me know what you thought of Pooka and the other Into the Dark anthology segments.
In the spirit of Blog-Posts-Yet-To-Come, make sure to tune in every month for a brand new Kills approved silver-screen nightmare as we embark on this brand new horror-of-the-month journey. I very much look forward to talking about scary movies with you, so make sure and leave a comment or follow
If you can’t wait, and absolutely need more horror in your life right now feel free to check out my review of The Babadook, another psychological example of truly frightful horror, then read our unapologetic praise of the most recent Halloween installment, and finally, peruse out our list of 31 must-see horror films.
“I’m sorry, love. You’re too late. It’s time for you to go.”
