Scare Campaign is a 2016 Australian horror film written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, and starring Meegan Warner, Ian Meadows, Olivia DeJonge, Josh Quong Tart and Sigrid Thornton.
Popular prank TV show, Scare Campaign, has been entertaining audiences for the last 5 years with its mix of old school scares and hidden camera fun. However, the producers find themselves up against a new hard edged web series Masked Freaks that involve a bunch of costumed people killing other people gruesomely. The producers decide to get darker as they set up an asylum to spook the new target: a creepy guy who used to work there. But are they about to prank the wrong guy?
Tropes:
- Abandoned Hospital: The team takes their next prank to an abandoned psychiatric hospital, where they intend to prank a new groundskeeper, Rohan.
- Ambiguous Ending: Emma and Abby escape the Masked Freaks in a van. But then Marcus finds out right before he is killed that Abby was one of the Masked Freaks the entire time. But then Emma notices another hidden camera filming them in the van, leading to the question whether she realizes she is still in immediate danger, if Abby realizes she realizes, and is either one going to attack the other.
- Axe Before Entering: Rohan comes after Emma with an axe. JD manages to grab her and haul her into the kitchen, sliding the door shut behind them. Rohan then uses the axe in an attempt to bash his way through the steel door.
- Axe-Crazy: Rohan is the 'stooge' the Scare Campaign crew bring to the abandoned psychiatric hospital to prank by convincing him that the building is haunted. However, Rohan turns out to be a former inmate of the hospital who snaps and starts murdering the crew; even coming after Emma with an actual axe. Except 'Rohan' is actually an actor, and is part of an elaborate set-up to prank Emma and the murders are fake.
- Buried Alive: The Masked Freaks seal Abby in an airtight coffin and bury her, telling Emma and Marcus that her air will last for maybe five minutes.
- Chainsaw Good: One of the Masked Freaks kills Tony using a chainsaw attached to his camera, so they can capture the footage for their Snuff Film.
- Character Name Alias: Emma introduces herself as Jennifer Agutter while playing the part of a nurse during the psychiatric hospital prank. Jenny Agutter is a British actress who played a nurse and the main love interest to David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London.
- Clothing Combat: Rohan garrotes Tony with a necktie.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: Emma and JD pile into the minivan and attempt to escape the Abandoned Hospital. However, they can't find the keys and JD jumps out to retrieve a spare set. After he is gone, a blood covered Rohan rises from the backseat and lays his hand on Emma's shoulder.
- Do Wrong, Right: Just before he is about to suffer Murder by Cremation, Marcus sees the footage of The Mole Abby being Buried Alive, and has to admit that they are actually a really good actor.
- Eye Scream: When Emma and Marcus find Suze's body hanging from the rafters, her eyes have been gouged out.
- Faking the Dead: It turns out that Emma and not Rohan is the intended 'stooge' of the episode. Rohan is actually an actor and all of the murders Emma thinks she sees him commit are faked as part of the show. The real murders start later.
- Impaled Palm: When Rohan rises suddenly from the back seat of the minivan, Emma reacts by driving a screwdriver through his hand: nailing it to the passenger seat.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The Snuff Film makers the Masked Freaks. It's all there in the name really.
- Metafictional Title: Scare Campaign is the name of the prank TV show the protagonists work for.
- The Mole: New actress Abby is actually a mole for the Masked Freaks; setting the cast and crew of Scare Campaign up to be killed by them.
- Murder by Cremation: The Masked Freaks murder Marcus by strapping him to a gurney and sliding him into a furnace.
- murder.com: The web series Masked Freaks involves a bunch of costumed people killing other people gruesomely.
- Rain of Blood: When Emma and Marcus arrive back in the control room, Emma looks at Marcus at remarks that he is bleeding. Marcus touches his scalp and finds blood but no cut. They then both look up and see Suze's mutilated body hanging from the rafters.
- "Rear Window" Witness: Emma can only watch helplessly on the monitor as the Axe-Crazy Rohan attacks Marcus and Dick with an axe, seemingly butchering both of them.
- Snuff Film: The web series Masked Freaks is about people being really murdered.
- Weaponized Camera: The Masked Freaks use a variety of weaponized cameras to bludgeon, stab, garrote, and chainsaw their victims.
- White Shirt of Death: Abby is dressed in a white shift when she playing a ghost in the Abandoned Hospital. When she is stabbed and thrown out of the window, she is left with multiple red stains blooming on the front of the shift and lying in a spreading pool of her own blood.
