Summary
Into the Dark: Pooka Lives! has an invested cast in the second story regarding the toy pooka, but it’s not enough to give it any future thought for further instalments.
This review of Hulu’s Into the Dark: Pooka Lives! (Episode 7 of Season 2) contains minor spoilers — the film will be available on Hulu on April 3, 2020. You can read the review of the previous instalment of the series by clicking these words.
We’ve already had an entire instalment on the pooka in Into the Dark, and Hulu has excitedly released the promotions that the pooka returns. I think we are expected to be excited with the wonderful title of Into the Dark: Pooka Lives!; jolting us into an upright position within our wallowing isolation. But while the first was directed by an Academy Award winner, the second instalment feels more of a throwaway filler gimmick in the rather inconsistent series.
And we must ask the question whether we care so much about the Celtic folklore of the Púca. Are the tales of the furred creature turned into a toy enough to sustain interest in a second film? Into the Dark: Pooka Lives!, easily retitled as Pooka Reborn, is a mere 90-minute horror purely there to serve entertainment. Replace the pooka with a serial killer that lurks in the dark, and you have the same film. The pooka loses the creepiness of the first instalment. It doesn’t rely on the possessive element and becomes more of an overhanging nightmare.
Into the Dark: Pooka Lives! follows a group of thirty-somethings who are close-knit friends who decide to launch a pooka game on the internet. What they don’t realise is that they have manifested murderous versions of the creature.
At least the cast is invested in Into the Dark: Pooka Lives!. The team seem to put a genuine effort into their respective roles which makes it less routine and has an air of emotional investment.
But if you were to miss this instalment of Into the Dark, would you be missing out? Absolutely not.
