SATAN'S LITTLE HELPER
Directed & Written by: Jeff Lieberman.
Produced by: Jeff Lieberman, Mickey McDonough, Isen Robbins & Aimee Schoof
Director of Photography: Dejan Georgevich.
Edited by: Jay Matthews.
Music by: David Horowitz.
Country of Origin: USA. 100 min.
With: Amanda Plummer, Alexander Brickel & Katheryn Winnick.
Playing at the Tribeca Film Festival

Horrifically funny, Satan’s Little Helper is a precautionary horror story about what happens when you talk to strangers. Dougie (Brickel) is all set for Halloween, and his stoner mom (Plummer) has made him a costume of Satan’s Little Helper, a character from his favorite video game. When his sister Jenna (Winnick) brings home a new boyfriend from college, Dougie, jealous and feeling pushed aside, sets out to trick-or-treat on his own. He stumbles upon a man dressed as the devil seemingly decorating porches with mangled corpses. Dougie takes the bodies to be just decorations. Having found his master, he stays with the silent man, and Satan has found the perfect accomplice to do his dirty work. As the town is turned into bedlam, scenes are full of blood and gore with edge-of-your-seat suspense. Slowly but surely, Dougie watches his entire life turn into a bloodbath before he realizes it’s not like a video game, and he has made a horrible mistake. Meanwhile, the costumed villain is impossible to catch as he changes identities, one time tenderly ironic as Jesus, which makes him even more frightening. We find ourselves trying desperately to warn Dougie of his stupidity before it’s too late, and then, in good keeping with the genre, it is too late. This tension only accentuates the suspense. The film is also a kind of social satire and keeps us laughing throughout in its portrayal of Dougie’s suburban family, especially in the comic relief of Amanda Plummer. In his director’s statement Jeff Lieberman writes, “I love to have an audience screaming, but I want to have them laughing as well,” and in this he succeeds. Lisette Johnson
May 2, 2004