Pooka! 2018

Wilson Clowes, Nyasha Hatendi, an unemployed actor, moves into a new apartment building to start a fresh life. He quickly befriends Red Dale Dickey, an older resident who offers a quiet, wary warmth as he begins to rebuild. In a local coffee shop, a vague audition notice catches his eye, and he decides to go, hoping for a break. After an unusual physical component during the audition, Wilson is offered the role by Finn Jon Daly, the advertising director behind a new Christmas toy called Pooka. The pitch is curious: a stuffed creature with oversized eyes that selectively repeats what it hears in either a “naughty” or “nice” voice, and Wilson would be the sole performer inside a large, furry costume for both ads and live appearances. He accepts, guided by the substantial pay and the chance to turn his life around.

As Pooka’s star rises, so does Wilson’s workload and the toy’s popularity. Yet the costume begins to exert a disturbing influence. When he embodies the “naughty” mode, Wilson experiences violent outbursts and unsettling hallucinations, followed by memory gaps that leave him shaken and isolated. Finn also sets Wilson up with Melanie Latarsha Rose, a real estate agent whose first encounter with him happens at a Christmas tree farm and then again at one of his in-store events. A spark grows as they begin dating, and Wilson even buys Melanie’s son Ty Jonny Berryman a Pooka toy, delighting the boy. The three of them—Wilson, Melanie, and Ty—spend time choosing a Christmas tree together, a small ritual that feels like a new beginning.

Yet the line between costume and person becomes dangerously blurred. Wilson experiences escalating visions, including a chilling fantasy in which naughty Pooka enters Red’s apartment to kill her. When he visits, Red is seen alive and well, and their conversation helps him confront the deeper pain he’s trying to outrun. He remembers that he changed his life to escape some unnamed guilt, and he clings to the idea that Pooka could perform in Ty’s birthday party as a way to redeem himself. At the party, Pooka appears in full costume, but the event’s tension exposes a darker truth: one of the kids notes the absence of a father figure for Ty, and the moment unsettles Wilson enough to trigger a violent outburst. Melanie senses something is wrong as Wilson’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic; she confronts him, and the fear in her eyes makes him lash out, convinced she’s doubting him. The birthday tree vanishes, a detail that fuels the growing mistrust between them and pushes Wilson toward a breaking point.

A widespread malfunction begins to affect the Pooka line: the toys start repeating only the distorted phrase, “Look at all the pretty lights,” in a menacing, naughty tone. The charm of the campaign collapses, and Wilson loses the job. In a pivotal, surreal encounter in a bar, Finn reveals a devastating truth: there never was a real Pooka. The bar feels empty, and Wilson realizes the entire setting may be a construct of his guilt and fear. The costume begins to fuse with Wilson, and he is seen struggling to breathe as the head remains glued to him. He returns to Melanie’s home with a box containing a Pooka toy that “apologizes” for his outburst, but Melanie is unsettled and, through Ty, learns that something is terribly wrong. In a tense moment, Wilson glimpses that the Pooka is watching from across the street as a man confronts him, and the truth about his own identity begins to unravel.

Tragedy compounds the horror. Red is found dead, and the onlookers suspect the sentient Pooka—raising questions about Wilson’s culpability. At Red’s apartment, Wilson discovers Pooka coated in gasoline and with fire in its eyes, heightening his fear that the creature will target Melanie and Ty. He warns Melanie, but Ty insists they must go to the Christmas tree farm for a new tree. Wilson finds the sentient Pooka suit again, and in a rage he strikes with an ax, seemingly killing it. He then returns to Melanie’s home only to learn that she and Ty are no longer there; a haunting memory of their life in an open-house setting returns—the moment when Wilson and Melanie were married and shared a life together. The past version of Wilson, in the Pooka costume, destroyed a Christmas tree while Ty watched. Past Melanie cannot hear present Wilson pleading for a different path.

In the closing act, the narrative threads converge with a stark, fatal truth. The Pooka-wearing Wilson follows his past self on a road trip toward the tree farm, while Melanie attempts to distract Ty with the same phrase that now haunts them both: > Look at all the pretty lights. The line becomes a harbinger as the car crash unfolds: Wilson’s past self drives head-on into another vehicle, killing Melanie and Ty and, in the other car, Red dies as well. Wilson, flung from the crash, is saved by the paramedics as a traumatised figure—somewhere between memory and hallucination—looks on. The final tableau returns to the empty bar, where Pooka-Wilson and the sentient suit watch as the version of Wilson who was driving is led away by responders, while Ty’s Pooka toy repeats the same haunting phrase. The film lingers on the cost of living inside a manufactured identity and the irreversible toll of violence hidden behind a beloved, child-friendly facade.