IMDB Summary:
Will Loomis lives with his mentally-handicapped sister Violet, who wants a younger child to play with, so Will kidnaps one (and then another) child from the local children’s home and tells them they’re dead.
FYA Summary:
Will Loomis lives on his dead parents’ pig farm with his mentally disabled sister, Jenny. With the farm falling apart and his sister becoming increasingly demanding, Will begins to go mad with isolation and stress. He hatches a desperate plan: he’ll drug and kidnap a boy from the local orphan home and keep him captive as an unpaid laborer and caretaker for his sister. But to his horror, Will discovers that the boy, Salem, is Black! Now he won’t be able to pass him off as a nephew or cousin. Well, there’s a simple solution. He’ll just tell Salem that’s he’s dead, and that the pig farm is the afterlife where he’ll labor for all eternity.
But with Salem balking at eternal torment and Jenny demanding another living plaything, Will is forced to steal another child. A girl. Only she’s no orphan. She has parents. Well, Will has gone this far….
With the authorities closing in and Salem becoming increasingly suspicious, this whole scheme is heading for a nasty showdown. Who’s going to escape and who’s going to end up seeing Heaven early?
Familiar Faces:
Kirk Cameron as Will Loomis
Cameron starts off as a likeable loser sort of character who commits felony kidnapping almost in spite of himself. But soon he buys into his own story, seeing himself as an avenging angel, the arbiter of the lives of all his subjects.
Jussie Smollett as Salem Borbeaux
Young Jussie does a good job of playing a young boy forced to deal with his own mortality in the most frightening way possible. Still, he has his adorable moments, like when he asks Will to introduce him to Martin Luther King (the only dead Black person the producers had heard of).
Couch-Sharing Capability: Terror snuggle
Watch this one with the lights on, as things get dark quickly. Spoiler alert: when Kirk comes out in his full angel garb complete with halo, fully convinced of his own divinity…things are about to get real.
Recommended Beverage: Non-alcoholic
By 1991, Cameron was already starting to go grand inquisitor, and it shows here. The leap from angel of the Lord to the Lord Himself was not far away. Of course, kidnapping Black people, forcing them to work on farms, and claiming it was all part of God’s plan is a grand old American tradition.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription eBay Account: Halloween Horror
This would be a good film when you’re in the mood for something terrifying and you’ve seen Silence of the Lambs too many times. It’s not streaming anywhere, but you could find a copy on Amazon or…what do you mean ‘Family movie’?
