Verdict:
Sometimes you can’t help but wonder whether what you just experienced aligns with the creators’ intentions. Satan’s Little Helper is a dark comedy but it is hard to figure out if it was supposed to be as ridiculous and as dumb as it is.
A little boy is a fan of Satan’s character, as a result of playing a game. When he comes across someone dressed as Satan on Halloween, he teams up with him, oblivious to the chaos they are about to unleash. Just explaining the plot makes me see the many missed opportunities to make this film more interesting, more frightening and more funny than what it ended up being. There was potential here.
This movie screams “low budget”. The video quality is that of a TV show. There are some known actors, like Amanda Plummer, but they would show their talents elsewhere. In this movie they are nobodies, with the primary child actor being some random kid. If that’s not off-putting enough, the acting isv very poorly directed. In situations where a normal person would scream, panic and run, the characters in Satan’s Little Helper respond with passionless dialogue.
The attacks are depicted with minimum gore, and the only gory death looks really cheap. There were a few moments where the music was not present, even though the situation obviously called for some. The screenplay is a nonsensical fever dream. Everything about this production is shaky.
Satan’s Little Helper might be perceived by many to be in bad taste, but that’s not the issue, especially as the genre inherently requires that kind of content. Silly situations and stupid dialogue can be excused to some degree, but this movie pushed that degree too far, and in combination with all the other flaws, it’s just not a very good movie. It doesn’t even qualify as a so-bad-it’s-good film. The only thing this movie has going for it is that its premise is a good idea. And because of that, I can see how a quirky black comedy like this may win some people over, as this weird Halloween thing that lodged itself in their memories for being different than anything they’ve seen before.