Teddy Told Me To (2022) comes from that place of oddly warm nostalgia which many horror fans have for the films they saw growing up – as grisly and oddball as many of those films were, they feel comforting and familiar. It also updates things, by adding in the phenomena of YouTubers, live streaming, state-of-the-art CCTV and other trappings of modern life to give the film a little more than just nostalgia. But all in all it’s a fun homage, clearly there for the cast and crew to enjoy making as much as for its audience to enjoy watching, and it gets a long way on sheer enthusiasm.
Starting with a clip from a YouTube channel called Randomland, we watch a guy livestreaming himself as he lets himself into an abandoned spookshow attraction: there’s a legend surrounding the place of – yep – real-life murders having taken place there, so where better for someone to explore? It goes awry, because of course it does. We then flip out of that channel to meet two people themselves watching this (as we now discover) old footage – part of their due diligence as they investigate the same site, ahead of potentially putting in an offer on it. And, hey, a local legend is no bad thing from the point of view of advertising, as they soon realise.
So that’s our frame: couple Zoe (Kamarra Cole) and Danny (Topher Hansson) do indeed purchase the old property and get ready to open, running auditions for new haunted house entertainers (okay, lingering a little too long on this part of proceedings) and, along the way, finding out more about what apparently happened in the old place. They are filled in by the old groundskeeper, Ron (C. J. Graham!) and his brother, who tells them with a little more certainty that, true enough, it’s all more than just a rumour. The attraction does have a dark, violent past. Once upon a time, they were visited by a troubled soul called Teddy…
There’s something of the late-Nineties Troma about the film via its fairly light-touch plotting, its soundtrack, its alt-looking cast and of course the way it splices gloriously OTT practical SFX with as much titillation as it can balance (as well as, as it happens, a Trent Haaga cameo, too). First-time director – and monster museum owner – Tom Devlin has a rock-solid background in practical effects work, as well as being on the receiving end of a few ridiculous deaths as an actor, so clearly these kinds of sequences are his bread and butter; he fills his first feature with them accordingly, and he clearly has a good idea of what he wants to see on screen, ably assisted by the rest of the 1313 make-up team. The film is also a Devlin family affair, with wife Lola as co-writer, and what looks like most of the rest of the Devlins who could get there cropping up as extras. The rest of the cast all have a kind of friends and wellwishers vibe, but it works well here, as the whole idea is that the horrorshow team are more than just that – they’re family. The cast genuinely do seem like they’re happy in each other’s company, and everyone present seems equally genuine in their love of the idea of working in a spookshow attraction, which is fair enough: the set is great, by the way, and is shot well, though to be fair, if a horror director couldn’t do well with wall-to-wall pumpkin faces and creepy props, then we’d be in some trouble.
Teddy Told Me To spends a lot of time clearly lining up the shots, putting work into set-ups which you know are going to follow down the line, but it works: likewise, you have a fair idea of what is going to go down here on the whole, but it’s entertaining almost because of that: the filmmakers get the genre and are having fun with the folklore of the slasher film – without taking it any more seriously than it should be taken. The result is a generally pacey, decently made, incredibly grisly story which does everything it can to surpass its budgetary constraints, while everyone has a good time getting it done. Ultimately, there’s lots to like here and the film certainly deserves to find an appreciative audience; they’re definitely out there.
Teddy Told Me To (2022) is seeking distribution now.