In short: Idle Hands (1999)

Teenage stoner Anton Tobias (Devon Sawa) has a little problem: a demon in the habit of possessing the body of the laziest sod it can find has taken possession of one of his hands, murdering people – including his parents but don’t you worry our hero will be more interested in his dating life than dead close relatives – while he’s sleeping the sleep of the stoned. Soon, his best stoner friends Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson) are dead too but return as undead because they couldn’t be bothered to step into the light, sometimes assisting Anton in a fight better left to the Ashs of this world. On the plus side, the whole affair also finally scores Anton the sexual attention of his big crush, neighbour Molly (Jessica Alba).

The teenage horror comedy is an intriguing little sub-genre, seeing how it has the potential to dig into elements of your usual coming-of-age stories from a different perspective. In reality, it’s the same mix of stoner jokes and underdeveloped female characters as most of the – typically guy-centric – non-horror teen comedies feature, just with more blood. That doesn’t mean these films are necessary all not worth watching: they just practically never do anything that’s even mildly deep or really interesting. Case in point is Rodman Flender’s Idle Hands with actors playing characters very much like the ones they play in all other teen comedies, and a romance that is pure teenage male wishfulfilment and only suggests Jessica Alba’s character to have anything even vaguely amounting to agency (or truthfully, a brain) when she’s turning into something of a badass for five minutes just before the script turns her into the prize to be rescued by Devon Sawa’s dubious prince completely.

However, if you’re okay with the total lack of depth, empathy and originality the film displays, there are some redeeming qualities to it: while Sawa isn’t a Bruce Campbell (or even a Michael Cain) in the hand fighting business he displays good comic timing and is generally funny in the splatstick lite sequences the film features, as is most of the rest of the cast in one way or the other. Well, there’s Seth Green, but my (probably unfair) complete antipathy to his apathetic acting style isn’t the problem of my imaginary readers (or his). On the feminist side, Vivica A. Fox’s demon hunter character does have a bit more to do than Alba, though her scenes usually feel like filler more than anything else.


And while most of the humour is pretty misanthropic and low-brow, the jokes tend to be timed well enough they still work on a guy like me who isn’t at all into this style of humour.