Spookies
Spookies
After taking a wrong turn, travellers find themselves trapped in a mysterious house. One horror after another threatens them as the flatulent sorcerer who lives within needs sacrifices to give eternal life to his beautiful bride. Whether or not the bride was as gassy as he is remains ambiguous.
Hipster ZOMBIE reviewedJuly 6, 2025
If you’ve ever wanted to watch a haunted house movie that feels like someone shoved Evil Dead, Return of the Living Dead, and Labyrinth into a blender, Spookies is your film. It’s a cult film in every sense of the world. So bad it’s good and somewhat review proof because of it.
Spookies is a narrative disaster. The plot—if you can call it that—follows a group of people who stumble into a spooky mansion and get picked off by an plethora of supernatural creatures. But thanks to a chaotic production history (two different filmmaking teams stitched together two different movies), the film plays like a stitched together mess of duct tape and confusion.
Then there are the special effects—cheap, rubbery, occasionally impressive but mostly laughable. Animatronic creatures, demon brides, grim reapers, farting zombies, and an evil sorcerer who looks like your uncle dressed up for a community theater role in The Hobbit. It’s bargain-bin horror at its finest, but there’s so much love in the craft that you can’t help but admire the effort.
The cast? Not much to speak of considering they all fall into the horror tropes you would expect from a 1980s horror film and you’d be hard pressed to remember their names but you will admire the bad acting and horrible but hilarious dialogue.
But here’s the thing: despite all its flaws—and maybe even because of them—Spookies is undeniably entertaining. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a broken down haunted funhouse at the fair built by enthusiastic amateurs with leftover Halloween decorations and way too much Red Bull. The movie never slows down, throwing creature after creature at you like a fever dream on VHS.
Over the years, this accidental mess of a movie has found a devoted fanbase. Horror lovers, midnight movie maniacs, and anyone with a soft spot for practical effects and ‘80s absurdity have embraced Spookies for what it is: a weird, wild, and wildly imperfect gem that succeeds on charm where it fails in coherence.
It’s a cult classic for a reason and therefore can’t be judged too harshly but can be admired the same way we fondly remember Troll 2 and Ghoulies.