Hulu and Blumhouse’s ongoing, holiday-based horror series Into the Dark is starting to crumble. After improving with each new episode in the first half of its planned dozen episodes, it stumbled last month with its 6th episode, Treehouse, a poorly-made #MeToo parable that wasted a talented cast and the clever idea at its heart. This month’s I’m Just F*cking with You, based around April Fools, continues that slump.
Directed by Adam Mason, it stars Kier O’Donnell as Larry, an anxious germaphobe who checks into the Pink Motel and Lounge on his way to attend his first cousin’s wedding to a woman named Cindy—who just happens to be Larry’s ex-girlfriend. Though we don’t know how long ago they broke up, Larry clearly isn’t over it considering he seems to spend a lot of his time trolling Cindy and others–mostly women–through an anonymous account called “Programming Flaw.”
Given that, it initially seems like the film’s horror will spring from that online persona, like some mix of Netflix’s Cam and the the final scenes of the “Nosedive” episode of Black Mirror. Instead, Larry’s online trolling takes a backseat when he meets meets real life troll, Chester (Hayes MacArthur), the man running the hotel for the night who keeps playing mean-spirited pranks on him. Though Chester is an obnoxious bro, MacArthur’s performance is the best thing about the film.
With floppy curls and facial hair obscuring his handsomeness and his voice dropped an octave and tinged with a southern twang, Hayes makes Chester the worst kind of bro. He’s desperate for attention and can’t take a hint. When he plays a broken door prank on Larry that leaves him half naked and embarrassed on the floor, Chester essentially gaslights him, essentially blaming Larry for being tricked rather than taking responsibility for not knowing when to stop. He’s obviously a sociopath, but for the film’s first half it’s unclear just how far his dysfunction goes and therein lies the film’s issues.
Though each episode of Into the Dark is meant to stand on its own, seven episodes in, it’s become too easy to spot the narrative patterns that connect each installment. Each film is 90 minutes long and as with New Year, New You and Down, I’m Just F*cking with You reveals its twist at almost exactly the film’s halfway point. While writers Gregg Zehentner and Scott Barkan make what comes after that reveal as insane and twisted as the premise demands, it simply takes too long to get there and the film’s first half can feel like wasted time. Worse, by reveling so much in Chester’s weirdness before connecting it all back to Larry’s online trolling, the film undercuts its ultimate point.
There is no reason I’m Just F*cking with You shouldn’t be great. It’s got a game cast, great musical choices by Chino Moreno and Ryan Neill and a fantastic visual style from Mason. Where it falters is in its commitment to sticking with the Into the Dark formula. The series was always an ambitious undertaking and while giving the episodes a standard format probably helps in developing the series, it’s starting to become too predictable halfway through. It may already be too late to save the remaining episodes, but here’s hoping the series finds a way to subvert itself soon.
