- Pandoooory's Pan Pizza Palace!
My pan pizza's number one!Pandoooory's Pan Pizza Palace!Come for the pizza, stay for the fun!
The Hug is a Short Horror Film by Jack Bishop and Justin Njim, made as part of Hulu's Huluween Film Festival.
Aiden is a kid who's celebrating his birthday at Pandory's Pan Pizza Palace, a Chuck E. Cheese's-like family fun centre. After cheating his way to a huge ribbon of tickets, he's decided he's ready for a show from Pandory. However, one of the employees has roped off the stage, stating that Pandory's on his dinner break, and that you do NOT want to disturb Pandory when he's eating.
Aiden, however, isn't about to let a "dinner break" keep him from getting what he wants. And so, he manages to swipe the keys to Pandory's controls and turn him on... he'll soon come to realize he should have listened to the guy.
The short was released on October 1st, 2018.
The Hug contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: The whole movie is essentially a horror version of The Rock-afire Explosion. Examples include Pandory being proportionally similar to Billy Bob Brockali as well as having a lower buck tooth in the same spot as the original and the logo of Pandory's being almost the same as the Rock-afire's logo.
- Adults Are Useless: Aiden's mother certainly wasn't paying much attention to Aiden right until the end of the film. Subverted with the male employee who specifically told Aiden not to approach the Pandory animatronic, but then became too preoccupied with the birthday party and failed to realize that Aiden pickpocketed his keys and activated Pandory. The male employee even showed frightening concern once he realized what happened and attempted to check on Aiden, only to realize Pandory had already eaten Aiden.
- Alliterative Name: Pandory's Pan Pizza Palace, of course.
- Asshole Victim: Aiden spent the short being a demanding little brat who didn't care about playing fair or listening to adults. For his troubles, he's eaten by Pandory.
- Blank White Eyes: Pandory does this when he's bear-hugging Aiden. His eyes then slowly turn down to reveal blood-shot veins as well as an intense reaction of horrid satisfication. The eyes turning from white to red shows just how sadistically evil Pandory may actually be as he's enjoying the moment.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Aiden, big time.
- Eaten Alive: Aiden, as revealed when his hand bursts out of Pandory's mouth.
- Hostile Animatronics: Pandory.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Pandory is revealed to be one when Aiden's arm bursts out of Pandory's mouth at the end of the short.
- Irony: As the kids were having dinner, Aiden became dinner himself.
- It Can Think: Pandory is revealed to have some form of sentience as he is able to move on his own and the facial expressions he makes shows that he does in fact feel emotions, albeit the most vile and sadistic kinds of emotions.
- Jumpscare: Three examples to be exact. One in the very beginning with a kid screaming during the logo, only to cut to kids yelling around the pizzeria. Another is when the camera shows the real and hideous face of Pandory. And the final example at the end where Aiden loudly screams and bursts his arm out of Pandory, trying to escape and reach for help.
- Kids Are Cruel: The first thing we see Aiden and his friends do is form a line on top of a Skeeball machine and pass all of the balls to Aiden so he can dump all of them into the 100 point hole and steal the machine's tickets.
- Nightmare Face: You can see what Pandory's face really looks like
for the brief moment when he's pulling Aiden behind the curtain to eat him. - No Ending: Aiden's hand bursts out of Pandory's mouth. Roll credits.
- Oh, Crap!: The male employee has this reaction when he realizes Aiden activated Pandory with the keys. He has another scared reaction when Aiden's arm bursts out of Pandory.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The male employee started off as an annoyed person who had to babysit a party of immature kids, but once he realized that Aiden got close to Pandory, he starts rushing to Aiden's aid and walks over the party table (even accidentally flinging a pizza at one of the kids) while holding a pizza server in his hand, making the scene very unsettling and even implying that he was going to use the pizza server as a possible weapon to save Aiden.
- People in Rubber Suits: Pandory behind the scenes is played by a mime wearing a costume with an animatronic face.
- Shout-Out: The climax and ending of the movie where Aiden is being eaten by Pandory may be a reference to the highly popular horror game Five Nights at Freddy's, where the hostile animatronics pretty much do the same thing as shown in this movie.
- Suck E. Cheese's: Pandory's Pan Pizza Palace. Sure, it has the games and the pizza, but it only has one animatronic character, Pandory. And he likes eating kids if he can get them close enough to him.
