Somewhere past the last streetlight, a campfire crackles, a dog keeps watch and three twelve-year-olds trade the kind of filthy, half-understood boasts that only make sense at that age. Then something enormous shifts in the dark. The Weird Kidz is a scrappy, hand-drawn horror-comedy that remembers exactly how thrilling, terrifying and embarrassing growing up felt, and it arrives with the unmistakable fingerprints of one obsessive artist on every frame.
Crude, gory and gloriously sincere, it is the rare horror-comedy that cares as much about its monster as its kids.
Movie at a Glance
- Director and writer: Zach Passero (who also animated the film)
- Voice cast: Ellar Coltrane, Tess Passero, Angela Bettis, Sean Bridgers
- Producers: Lucky McKee and Charles Horak
- Genre: Animated horror-comedy, coming-of-age adventure
- Runtime: About 80 minutes
- US release: Limited cinemas via Antenna Releasing, listed from 23 October 2026 after a rolling run of US cinema dates
- UK availability: No UK release date has been announced yet
- Rating: Not rated; expect strong gore, crude sexual humour and swearing
Viewer Match
- Best for: Fans of 1980s monster movies, cult creature features and adult animation with a handmade edge.
- Maybe skip if: You want polished studio animation, or you have no appetite for gross-out jokes and dismemberment.
- Mood and pace: Loose and chatty at first, then increasingly wild, bloody and unexpectedly heartfelt.
- Cinema or streaming? Cinema if a midnight-style crowd screening is near you; otherwise it will play just as well at home with friends.
- Spoiler level: Spoiler-free: nothing beyond the established premise.
One Man, Eight Years, Thousands of Drawings
The story behind the film is part of its charm. Zach Passero wrote, directed and animated The Weird Kidz largely by himself over roughly eight years, and the result looks like a graffitied school exercise book brought to life. Lines wobble, backgrounds are sketchy and the movement can be stiff, yet that roughness becomes a style rather than an apology. It feels closer to late-night MTV animation and EC horror comics than to anything a studio would sign off.
The premise is simple. Twelve-year-old Dug and his two friends tag along on a desert camping trip with Dug’s older brother Wyatt and his new girlfriend, and a local legend called the Night Child turns out to be horribly real. What follows mixes campfire hangout, creature feature and cult-ritual mayhem in a way that keeps wrong-footing expectations: just when you think you know which kind of horror film this is, it swerves.
Puberty, Monsters and Parenthood
Beneath the bodily-fluid gags there is a genuinely thoughtful film. Dug and Wyatt feel sidelined at home, latchkey kids let down by the adults around them, and the screenplay quietly sets their neglect against a monster that fiercely protects its own young. That mirror gives the film an emotional spine that most gross-out comedies never bother to grow, and it is why the final stretch lands with more feeling than you might expect from a cartoon this rude.
The kids’ dialogue is the film’s secret weapon. It captures the boastful, misinformed, endlessly profane chatter of boys on the edge of adolescence, and it sounds observed rather than written. Not every joke lands, and the humour is pitched squarely at viewers who find that age funny rather than exhausting, but the affection for these characters is never in doubt.
Voices, Sound and That Night Child
Tess Passero gives Dug a scratchy, eager energy that sells his mix of bravado and fear, while Ellar Coltrane brings an easy, slacker warmth to Wyatt that recalls the hangout feel of his best-known work. Genre favourites Angela Bettis and Sean Bridgers add cult credibility in supporting roles, and Grumbles the dog becomes a memorable character without a line of dialogue.
The creature design is a highlight: a huge, bug-like presence that owes a debt to 1950s atomic monster pictures such as Them! and to the creature features of the 1980s. Making the monster a mother protecting her brood, rather than a masked slasher, is the film’s smartest swerve. The execution is uneven and the animation is undeniably rough around the edges, but the gore is staged with gleeful, unpredictable invention.
Where It Sits in the Monster-Movie Canon
There are obvious touchstones here, from The Monster Squad and The Gate to Stand by Me, and the film wears them proudly. What lifts it above pastiche is sincerity. Passero is not winking at the 1980s; he is trying to recapture how those films felt to a kid watching them too young, and for long stretches he succeeds.
It will not convert anyone who dislikes crude humour or rough-hewn animation. But as a handmade cult object, the kind of film that gets passed between friends with the words “you have to see this”, it is a genuine original in an animated landscape that rarely takes risks this strange.
Spoiler-Free Verdict
- Performances: 7/10
- Direction: 8/10
- Screenplay: 7.5/10
- Score: 6.5/10
- Cinematography: 7/10
- Entertainment Value: 8/10
- Overall: 7.5/10
Final Star Rating: ★★★★☆ — 4/5
Verdict Badge: One for Fans
One-line verdict: A rough-edged, wildly rude and surprisingly tender one-man animated horror show that earns its cult status.
Its animation is crude and its humour will divide audiences, but the heart, invention and affection for its misfit heroes make The Weird Kidz a must for creature-feature fans.
Watch the Official Trailer
Take a look at the official trailer for Zach Passero’s The Weird Kidz, released by Antenna Releasing.
Do you prefer your monster movies polished or proudly handmade? Tell us, without spoilers, whether The Weird Kidz is on your Halloween watchlist.