Review: Spooky Dreams “Pilot”

The horror influences in adult animation are becoming more and more profound, with anime and Adult Swim being the two institutions at the forefront of this. With the likes of Robert Englund showing up in the most recent episode of JJ Villard’s Fairy Tales (not to mention Englund’s most popular character, “Freddy Krueger “who has showed up in various parodies like Rick and Morty, The Simpsons, and South Park), Vernon Chatman’s The Shivering Truth, and the upcoming Uzumaki for Toonami, the knack to scare people is becoming more and more evident.

Enter, Spooky Dreams, a new pilot from Zae Jordan & Javier Williams featuring a kid named “Spooky” who has…well…dreams! Only his dreams can probably be classified closer to that of nightmares because he’s got a demon hot on his tale trying to end his life using tricks and treats (like Zoe Kravitz) in an attempt to get Spooky once and for all.

It’s ironic that the son of South Park’s “Chef” (Isaac Hayes III) is in this series, because aesthetically, Spooky Dreams is of the ilk of the pilot episode of South Park or 12 oz Mouse, but because of the dark and brooding nature of some of the sequences, this aesthetic helps exemplify the jump scares and makes for a more rewarding experience.

That’s not to say that Spooky Dreams doesn’t have the comedic timings or overtones of it’s Adult Swim brethren, quite the opposite. Spooky Dreams has what I like to call “pothole jokes”. Have you ever driven down a road and hit an unexpected pothole? That’s a pothole joke. It’s the gags and jokes you don’t expect to hit you as you’re entranced in the lead character’s quest to wake up so as to escape the pesky demon haunting his dreams. It works super well here, and I think if a whole season were ordered, Spooky Dreams could be a hit.