I have seen many viewers say that POOKA! was the best installment in the Hulu / Blumhouse anthology series Into the Dark, and sometimes it's even the only film in the series that someone enjoyed at all. I wasn't too fond of POOKA! myself, stories built around a character's hallucinations usually aren't for me, but ever since I watched that movie with friends in December of 2018 we have all had the "Pooka see, Pooka do" jingle stuck in our heads.
If you haven't seen POOKA!, Pooka is a goofy looking toy that listens to everything the kids who own it are saying, and will occasionally repeat something. Sometimes it will repeat the line in a nice way, sometimes in a naughty way. And that's all there is to the thing. But the movie it was in has proven to be so popular that another Into the Dark entry has now been built around the toy.
Set to premiere on the Hulu streaming service on April 3rd is POOKA LIVES, the story of
a group of thirty-something friends from high school who create their own Creepypasta about Pooka for laughs, but are shocked when it becomes so viral on the Internet that it actually manifests more murderous versions of the creature.
While POOKA! was directed by Nacho Vigalondo and written by Gerald Olson, Alejandro Brugués is at the helm of this follow-up, working from a script by Ryan Copple.
POOKA LIVES stars Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, Malcolm Barrett, Rachel Bloom, Jonah Ray, Lyndie Greenwood, and Gavin Stenhouse.
A Pooka toy also made a cameo in Marcus Dunstan's Thanksgiving 2019 entry in the Into the Dark series, PILGRIM.