HOW NOT TO WRITE: Pooka!

Human-sized furry creature sitting at a diner table.

Answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?

In the third installment of Blumhouse’s monthly horror movie installments on Hulu, Pooka! is the story of a struggling actor who gets a little too into his part as the titular Pooka, and begins to spiral, as he loses track of who he is outside of Pooka.

This definitely isn’t the worst horror movie I’ve ever seen, and therein lies the problem. I felt like this one had more potential, but it does need more work. Problematically, I’m more on the narrative side, and I wouldn’t know how to balance the cinematography and other elements that were good with editing the script as a whole.  

Pooka! has its optimum potential as a story about an abuser realizing the logical outcome of his behavior, but as a coherent film, it is hindered by several major issues: 1) It is trying too hard to hide the reveal with confusion despite having given it away, and 2) it is trying to do and be so many things that the abuser angle becomes a secondary note to the wackiness.  It’s about commercialism, but also a bad father/husband who ended up killing his wife and child. It’s an homage to both A Christmas Carol and “An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge.”

Below, are tons of spoilers, but since this has been out for a year, we’ll deal with it.

You could do either reference, really. Ebenezer Scrooge and Peyton Farquhar aren’t particularly nice people, and as we learn over the course of the movie, neither is Wilson. What we can glean from his delusional imaginings of being the Pooka guy and the pictures on the wall is that he was in fact an actor (successful enough to make it to the red carpet), one with a roiling temper, who probably cheated on his wife, gaslit her, and was prone to bouts of violence. Problematically, Wilson can’t be led around by three spirits when one of the three spirits isn’t dead (more on that in a moment), and he can’t be shown these things if they’ve already happened and nothing can change them. We need a clue at the end to lead us back to the point.  I’d argue we don’t even have to know whether the Pooka is a hallucination or a supernatural entity because it ultimately doesn’t matter, but there are other things that need sorting out.

So, on the one hand, you have the “Occurrence” things going on, with the elements of the crash bleeding into Wilson’s ongoing fantasy with flashing police lights, people he saw at the scene of the crash, and of course Pooka himself, and “all the pretty lights.” On the other, you have A Christmas Carol, though Wilson memorizing Scrooge’s monologue with the Ghost of Christmas Future at the beginning, but also with echoy lines along the way, like “I know who you are” and “I’m ready to be a better man.” Also, we have Naughty Pooka standing with Wilson in the end looking like HELL, and Wilson seeing glimpses of the past throughout the movie. It’s up for debate whether Red is one of his ghosts or not, because she’s the softest and warmest, and does try to encourage him that he could still change and do better. Another potential ghost is the director, Finn, and he’s only a candidate because he’s there occasionally to remind Wilson that he isn’t the Pooka, “It’s always just been you!”

And that’s all well and good for analysis, but we’re watching a horror movie, and we need some sense of cohesion, goals, and fear. It’s fine for a horror film to be confusing, even frustrating. Donnie Darko is slow, strange, and unsettling, creeping wrongness. Hellions is a dreamlike nightmare that suggests our heroine has been targeted by our little monsters from the moment she finds out that she’s pregnant, and we don’t even know at the end if she’s woken up or not.

The problem is, as I perceive it, and as others have told me, that the level of uncertainty of what is going on, coupled with the dead certainty that something bad is going to happen to his son Ty, made it not worth it to even continue watching. Fair enough. A lot of interpretations of this movie seem convinced that in the end, Wilson is viewing the future with Pooka silent (for once) by his side. For others, since the beginning of the movie seems to take him from the end of the movie to our current action in Wilson’s new fake apartment (so new that his key doesn’t even work), it seems like Wilson is just dreaming as his traumatized or dying brain is trying to thrash out what happened.

I’m not sure that I could commit to either interpretation, but I believe that it would be a significantly better movie if we were dealing with the Ghost of Future and the question were up in the air about whether Wilson could change. OR, if it became clear that Wilson is caught in a loop, torturing himself over what he’s done. The meatiest horror lately has drawn on the horror of reality and personal relationship, so there could’ve been so much more here.

Likewise, the meaning of Pooka himself is up for debate. It seemed clear enough on my first watch that Pooka was a straight up metaphor for an abuser, especially in that “naughty or nice” aspect. “You never know what Pooka will do!” Because at any moment, Wilson might be charming and kind, or he might punch a wall, wreck his apartment, smash the tree, hit a child, who knows? But Pooka’s appearance also mimics that of a damn car, especially with the red and blue lights of a cop car, red when Naughty Pooka is in charge and Blue when Nice Pooka is in charge.

But ultimately, as Finn explains, Pooka decides what he wants to remember (convenient for an abuser); Pooka decides whether he’ll be naughty or nice. It’s all pretty much Wilson’s choice, whether or not he seems to be out of control. He doesn’t trash his adorable abstract painting. He trashed the tree.

As I’ve been describing this, it all sounds terribly serious. And it kind of is, but there is also a lot of humor. I mean you have a grown ass man walking around in a suit that looks like a cross between a Furby and a Teletubby with Dead Lights for eyes. It is rankly hilarious to watch him plod around without the Pooka head on. Eventually, we hit a level of creepy with Pooka (let’s say, Wilson masturbating with the Pooka head on), however, it’s just funny. Pooka’s theme song is wacky and catchy in a Cars4Kids kind of way. Toward the end, Wilson strangles Naughty Pooka with CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. But when mixed with the impending death of his child?

AWFUL. Oh, dear lord, awful. I dunno how to fix this mess. I think that’s the issue with horror, sometimes, because there’s so much license to mess with our perceptions. Where do you divorce the stylization, which is a strength in this movie, from the confusion of the plot?

TL;DR: How Not to Write

If I were giving advice to a friend, I’d focus on a few things. And even then, I don't know if it would help.

• Don’t give your audience whiplash. 

If you are going for a mixed tone, you have to either ramp that shit up as you go, or hit a happy medium somehow. I don’t think Pooka! manages it. For a masterclass in fucking with your audience via comedy/horror, watch the fourth season of Lucifer. If the episode starts with wacky shenanigans and orgie pants, you’re gonna be crying by the end of it. Good gods.

If you’re going to kill a child, I want you to destroy me. I want to be swollen-eyed crying over the death of Prim in The Hunger Games destroyed. Balance. That. Tone.

• Don’t overdose on references and symbolism. 

I’ve been immersed in literature, rhetoric, and writing for the majority of my adult life. I get it and I love it. But if it overshadows and confuses your message, especially when you’re dealing with an already confusing narrative thanks to quick cuts and the nature of memory… pick a reference and then hone and clarify it. The most important elements are not the camera tricks, but the family and Wilson’s character. The themes that are important are violence and fame. I believe with some clearer editing, and a bit more at the end, we’d have a more satisfactory horror. It may have been intentional to leave it open… but this was a mistake. We should know if Wilson is in Hell, or if he’s about to be deposited back into his life to find out if he can become “a better man.”

This would only take a moment. Cut back to Wilson standing in front of his house in the outfit he begins and ends the movie in, lingering in front of the door as he tries to decide whether he should try to turn it around or leave Melanie and Ty to keep them safe from the real monster (him).

• Don’t destroy your narrative to hide your plot. 

Look, if we figured out less than halfway through that Wilson is Ty’s father and that Ty and Melanie are going to die… fine. This movie bends over backwards to hide its ending twist. But the twist is so obvious, partially because we see the crash and fire from the very beginning. It might help a lot if they didn’t telegraph their most affecting scene. We’ve lost the impact too quickly.

As I’ve said before, Don’t Blow Your Wad. Build the narrative piece by piece and take your audience with you.

• Be wary of using a blank slate. 

Nyasha Hatendi does a good job with Wilson, but at the beginning of the movie, he’s not much of a character. It’s probably deliberate because he’s choosing not to remember his past, but at the same time, it causes the first third of the movie to plod along.

Overall, my advice for improving this movie would be to keep the tone lighter at the beginning and move gradually into the shocking and disturbing. Don’t give away the ending and keep us in suspense with more carefully plotted cuts. Keep laying the groundwork for that parallel to A Christmas Carol so the one reference is clearer and the important themes come to the front. And give Wilson a bit more of a personality, even if it is only his “charming” personality at first, to help the narrative get moving.

What are your thoughts? Did you love Pooka!? Do you have better ideas about how to fix it? Do you have other Christmas movies, horror or otherwise, that you think deserve a shot?