Clickbait: What Happens Next Will Scare You

The journalists of online site Click Clique have ostensibly assembled on the evening of October 28 to pitch their picks for the scariest viral videos. However, editor-in-chief June (Kalima Young) has divulged a truth to her top reporter, Rachel Silver (Melissa LaMartina). The site is going to have to downsize because the click-through revenue streams are just not there to support their current size. So, people will be losing their jobs tonight.

Who will it be? Rachel herself, since she has dreams of real, investigative reporting instead of shilling shock schlock pieces? Or maybe the terminally late manchild Eugene (Johnny Mara)? Or how about catty Lester (Troy Jennings)? Or what about fashion unconscious and sarcastic Vanessa (Kathy Carson)? Maybe the intern Myra (Rachel D. Wilson), a new employee with dreams of becoming something bigger? Surely not Rooster (Paul Fahrenkopf) the janitor—no one else wants to clear toilet blockages, after all. The only one truly safe is Chuck (John Bennett), the security guard employed by the building’s owners.

Well, the Click Clique crew’s one shot at keeping their jobs is to produce interesting clickbait, so hopefully everyone brings their A-game and makes June’s life hard.

The videos they supply are a mixed bag of offerings, including a ghostly birthday party video that freaked one of them out when they were younger, a Do It Yourself Exorcism VHS tape found under a defrocked and deceased uncle’s bed, a horrifying video dating plea from a professional clown, the weirdest fetish ever, the craziest fishing show episode never finished, and even a four part vlog that takes its host Vera (Maddie Howard) down a slow burn rabbit hole of horror … However, it is one video shown early on that, while not impressing June, nevertheless changes things. A video of an indigenous death song may well be waking playful spirits and erasing the line between video entertainment and reality.

As some of the creepier elements begin to invade the offices, can the journalists set aside their skepticism in order to survive the night? Or will they become the next set of cautionary tales, living proof that clickbait may well be the death of journalism … or those who practice it? Chris LaMartina helms, edits, and cowrites (along with Jimmy George) a portmanteau picture for the twenty-first century, which presents horrific variations on those annoying little videos we cannot help but click on, even if we receive the warning that What Happens Next Will Scare You (2020).

Portmanteau films are a fun venue for small flicks, with some standout films like Dead of Night (1945), Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Tales from the Crypt (1972), and the tried and true, made-for-television picture Trilogy of Terror (1975). Chris LaMartina has helmed a surprising entry in the field before, populating WNUF Halloween Special with little commercials and similar story nuggets amidst a framing story of a news team venturing into a haunted house. That was a sly anthology picture, which felt less like an anthology of short stories than a cohesive document of a period.

What Happens Next Wil Scare You is much more in a traditional vein, though its framing story is also one lengthy, coherent tale and the short stories each provide components that will recur in the final act of that framing story. So, in that regard, it has a lot more in common with the terrific Dead of Night than many of the portmanteaus that followed in its footsteps—that earlier picture brings all the individual stories together as well in a nightmarish flight and pursuit segment.

However, there’s nothing classic feeling about this story. Instead, co-writers LaMartina and Jimmy George deliver very modern spins on the short stories we expect. The individual videos are generally incredibly brief, getting to the point quickly (or, in one case, interrupting its own story with an unexpected segue). So, there is room for eight or nine of these things over the course of the movie (with a special coda that recasts what we’ve seen as one more component in the continually growing and expanding creepypasta universe). Some of them are appropriately terrible, some pure cheesy joy, a couple oddly affecting, and all of them wonderful documents of the sort of material we might encounter on a late-night’s random journey through the annals of YouTube.

The film is grappling with two big subjects. First is the direction journalism is heading in this falsified infotainment, click baiting world. Here is where a satiric approach comes in the strongest. These educated, passionate people are squabbling over menial things instead of pursuing journalism’s loftier ideals. Combing through viral videos to see what might hit and what won’t pale in comparison to researching and composing stories about what is happening in this crazy world of ours. And yet, those viral videos will turn into life or death matter to this tiny cluster of people who really ought to know better …

However, the film is also wrestling with the values and vulnerabilities to be found in skepticism. It posits there are hidden parts in our world, the kinds of things that real, objective journalism won’t touch because they are unverifiable and strange. At one point during the exchange of ideas this crystalizes in the dialogue. One of the journalists opines that monsters are real, but in general people usually don’t look for them or see them except in isolated, unshakeable moments. Of course, that is the core conceit behind urban fantasy and creature horror flicks, of course. But here, we get a sense that the unseen world is a tad more ubiquitous than it might seem, and all this technology we possess has not done one bit of good to expose those very real though isolated threats. Healthy skepticism is armor against mundane threats like con artists and what would come to be known as fake news, but it can become one giant vulnerability when taken to an unhealthy extreme. Following the death song record, some of the keener folks start to notice signs of something strange happening. Do they ask the hard questions, point this out? No. Instead, they remain mute and collect data to make sure they are not imagining things of being turned into victims of some conspiratorial prank.

The picture presents an intriguing contrast to something like The Night Stalker (1972), which presents a skeptical reporter Carl Kolchak who finds enough evidence to convince him that an honest to goodness vampire is stalking Las Vegas, who raises alarms and is disbelieved, and who is finally silenced for sticking to his guns and taking care of business. Here, we get a team of reporters who have enough evidence to ask uncomfortable and challenging questions, but who choose to muzzle themselves out of fear of being silenced, jeered at, or fired instead of doing their jobs …

Needless to say, there is plenty of food for thought running under the surface of this flick.

The Terror Vision Blu-ray release includes the commentary and deleted scenes found on the DVD version. It ups the ante with some additional features, including a piece on ten overlooked segments from anthology pictures of the past (including one from What Happens Next Will Scare You itself) as well as an advertisement for and interstitial elements from a screening of this portmanteau flick on Baltimore’s own Shocktails Hour show with ghoulish hostess Aurora Gorealis. Those parts are especially fun to watch, though I do wish there were an option to see the film with those segments spliced in as originally shown.

What Happens Next Will Scare You is a clever approach to the tried-and-true portmanteau style of horror filmmaking. Not all the mini-films work, and there’s a low budget charm throughout the framing story that will appeal to a cultish audience more than a general one, the project is a love letter to the format as well as an opportunity for regional filmmakers to strut their stuff.

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What Happens Next Will Scare You is available in DVD and Blu-ray editions.

On Monday, we will take a look at the brand new picture about a group of kidnappers who wind up with a bloody mess on their hands. Abigail is currently showing in theaters and is therefore not available in DVD, Blu-ray, or VOD editions. Eventually, this will change, I am sure.

Writing for “Clickbait: What Happens Next Will Scare You ” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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