Idle Hands movie review & film summary (1999)

"Idle Hands" samples other teen horror movies like a video DJ with a tape deck, exhibiting high spirits and a crazed comic energy. It doesn't quite work, but it goes down swinging--with a disembodied hand. The hand, which has a mind of its own, has been chopped off the arm of a teenage kid who is the victim of some kind of weird Halloween demonic possession.

The film involves the adventures of Anton (Devon Sawa), a pothead so addled he doesn't notice for a few days that his parents are dead--the victims of an evil power that writes "I'm under the bed" on the ceiling of their bedroom, and is. Anton's chief occupations are getting high and hanging out with his friends Mick and Pnub, who live in a nearby basement. The three of them are dropouts from all possible societies, and their world is like a cross between "SLC Punk!" and "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn." (If neither one of those titles rings a bell, the movie undoubtedly won't, either.) The possessed killer hand is, of course, lifted from "Evil Dead 2," but it wasn't original there, and has its origins in such films as "The Hand" and "The Beast With Five Fingers." Rodman Flender, who directed this film, has fun with it in a scene where Anton is on a date with the babe of his dreams, Molly (Jessica Alba), and tries to fight down the hand as it tries to throttle her. Finally, he ties it to the bed. Molly, who is not very observant, translates this as kinky. Anton finally rids himself of the hand (it's chopped off in the kitchen, with the wound cauterized by an iron). His pals Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson, from "The Mighty") have worse luck. Mick is taken out by a beer bottle, which remains embedded in his skull for the rest of the movie. Pnub loses his head altogether and carries it in his hands until Anton figures out how to mount it on his shoulders using a barbecue fork. Don't ask. Both of them continue through the entire film as the living dead.