the plot: It’s Halloween, and Dougie Whooly (Brickel) couldn’t be more excited to go trick or treating with his older sister, Jenna (Winnick), who’s visiting from college. His mom (Plummer) has even made him a sweet devil costume, based on his favorite video game, “Satan’s Little Helper.” But Dougie is crestfallen when Jenna shows up with Alex (Graham), her new boyfriend. Sullen, Dougie ventures out on his own and meets a mysterious masked man who he believes to be Satan himself—just like from the video game. Dougie asks Satan if he can tag along and help him spread mischief, unaware that Satan is actually a masked serial killer taking advantage of the Halloween festivities. Satan and Dougie run over pregnant ladies with shopping carts, set up a violent ambush for Alex and shed a fair amount of blood—all before Dougie brings Satan home to meet his family. When Satan violently murders Dougie’s father right before his eyes, it’s up to the young boy and his mother and sister to put an end to Satan’s rampage.

why it’s good: There are plenty of things wrong with “Satan’s Little Helper,” from the almost cheerful, friendly way that little Dougie regards Satan (even before all the murdering begins) to the weird, almost flirtatious way Jenna and her mother interact with each other. Yes, this is a big, steaming pile of wrongness, at the center of which is Dougie, quite possibly the dumbest character ever to appear on film. He’s a level of stupid beyond description, a boy so dense that it takes watching some guy dressed as Satan eviscerate his father and tie his intestines to a chair to convince little Dougie that maybe being friends with Satan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At first, Dougie’s idiocy is mildly amusing, but as his ass-hattery grows during the course of the movie, you may find yourself actively rooting for a vicious serial killer to violently dispatch the 12-year-old boy, if only to make him stop saying things like, “Jenna’s my girlfriend! I’m going to marry her!” While the conceit behind “Satan’s Little Helper” is amusing, it becomes apparent after the first few gruesome murders that the only way to drag this baby out to feature length is by making all the characters act like they’ve got the mental capacity of a chicken bone. While Lieberman is a perfectly capable filmmaker, he’s a lousy storyteller working with an equally terrible cast. It’s painful to watch, but slightly worth it just to hear someone exclaim, after Satan changes costumes and becomes the Son of God, “...and Jesus is Satan!” You won’t get that kind of ontological revelation out of your typical cheesy horror movie.

why you should own it: “Satan’s Little Helper” is amusing enough to rent, but owning it may have adverse effects on you and the rest of your movie collection. The brave souls who add it to their library are “rewarded” with some behind-the-scenes footage, but not with any explanation of why Dougie is so damned stupid.