Satan's Little Helper

This film is exactly what a horror should aim to be. The film itself is sick, twisted and has a creepy sense of humour that is always lurking underneath the atmosphere. This film is by far no means perfect and you can very easily tell that the budget was not very high. But the director works well with what he has and gives the viewer something that up mostly scares them and makes them feel for the characters. This film is a great horror/slasher movie and whoever enjoys films like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or House of 1000 corpses should definitely pick this up as it is well worth watching.

A scary 7/10

In Halloween, the student of theater Jenna Whooly (Katheryn Winnick) returns to Bell Island to spend the holiday with her family and her boyfriend Alex Martin (Stephen Graham), who studies in the same class and was also raised in the island. Her young brother Douglas "Dougie" Whooly (Alexander Brickel), who is very attached to Jenna and is fascinated in the video game Satan's Little Helper, becomes jealous with the presence of Alex. He leaves home wearing his costume of Satan's little helper seeking Satan on the streets to kill Alex. Dougie meets a serial-killer that coincidently is wearing a costume of Satan and proposes him to attack Alex. He brings the insane murderer home, and Jenna and her mother Merrill Whooly (Amanda Plummer) believes that the masked killer is Alex acting like Satan to please Dougie. Later the boy walks with the criminal along the streets helping him to kill the locals.

I bought the DVD "Satan's Little Helper" with very low expectations and I found an absolutely cult-movie. The morbid story blends slasher-movie with very dark comedy, and works since it is hilarious mostly because the funny performances of the masked Satan. His piece-of-art with the bodies of his victims could be more explored in the story. The naive little moron that helps him is annoying and imbecile and Katheryn Winnick is extremely gorgeous and seductive wearing her mother's costume. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Ajudante de Satã" ("The Satan's Helper")

This is the 2nd time that I've watched "Satan's Little Helper" now; once in 2019 and some time back around the mid 2000s. Funny how the movie actually was more enjoyable than I initially remembered it to be.

The movie is a wonderful mix of horror and dark comedy, and the movie never really takes itself too serious. Which is a good thing, because while there is an overlaying element of comedy to the movie, there is still something dark and definitely horror element to it.

I couldn't remember that it was Katheryn Winnick whom was in this movie, maybe because this was from way before "Vikings" made her famous. It was actually fun to watch her in a movie such as this. And of course it was also nice to see Amanda Plummer in this movie.

As for the killer, well it wore a little bit thin throughout the course of the movie that he didn't talk or that you didn't get to see his face. It has been done in way too many horror movies already prior to "Satan's Little Helper". The mask he wore, though, was cool.

The horror elements in the movie were not over the top, but had just the right of horror mixed with dark comedy to keep the movie interesting. While the movie does have elements of comedy to it, it is not the type of movie that will make you laugh.

"Satan's Little Helper" is enjoyable to watch, but hardly makes for a horror classic.

Satan'S LITTLE HELPER surprised me. I was expecting ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from this one, and typically avoid these low-budge, straight-to-video American films altogether...but this one was different. There were definitely a few "flaws" as most of these types of films have, but even so, SLH was a fun way to blow 100 minutes...

The story is about a kid obsessed with a video-game entitled (appropriately enough...) Satan'S LITTLE HELPER. The boy's sister comes back home from college on Halloween to go trick-or-treating with the little brat, but he gets jealous when the sister brings the new boyfriend along. The brat runs off to "go find Satan" and stumbles across some wackadoo in a weird mask who is making Halloween decorations out of his recent murder victims. The brat, having an overactive imagination, believes the masked weirdo to be the Lord Of Darkness, and asks if he can tag along and be his "helper". "Satan" agrees and the boy helps assists new-found master on a twisted and hilarious killing spree...

Two main gripes with this one. SLH would definitely have benefited from a lot more gore. There was only one or two scenes that have any gore in them, and some of the inventive kill scenes could have benefited from some more of the red stuff. But my REAL complaint is that the "sister" is so smokin' hot that it is an absolute TRAVESTY that she never gets nekkid in the film. Everyone involved in SLH should suffer a torturous Satanic death for this HUGE injustice. But those two problems aside - SLH is quite enjoyable. Some truly hilarious scenes, and the performance by "Satan" is very noteworthy. Though he never speaks a word, his body language and charisma show through even though he's in full costume. If I ever meet Satan, I hope he's exactly like this guy...

Under the surface, this film also poses some interesting questions about children's ability (or lack thereof...) to differentiate fantasy from reality, and many children's growing obsession with video-games and other modern media. Not that SLH is any sort of "morality tale" - on the contrary, it definitely has the "heart" of a dark-humored horror film - but it does pose a few interesting questions if viewed in a certain light. Overall, I would recommend this one as a fun "knock-back-a-few-drinks-and-check-it-out"-style film. Worth a look - 8/10

This movie has a pretty absurd premise (it's hidden in the title, so that doesn't count as a spoiler)! I could only hope that it would at least kind of live up to that crazy expectation ... and it did at the beginning! Also you're welcome for the pun in the summary line above.

It was as it should be, black humor and sick jokes all over the place. Just as it should be, with a movie like that. No political correctness in sight, that would've just be a distraction! A bad one, too! For a few people the first bump will be, that there is no nudity in the movie. But you know, although this is a horror movie, where you kind of expect that, I didn't think that was a bad thing. It went against expectations for once in the right place. The jokes worked without that, too!

But then it happens ... what I mentioned in the subject line ... it's a shame, but the movie just runs out of ideas and just gets annoying from a certain point on. And it's a shame too, because it all felt good and right up to that point, but after that it's downhills ...

Still worth a watch on disc or stream, if you like off-balance, black humor, that isn't political correct! (originally reviewed July 2007, slight update in June 2022)