BAD KARAOKE

***

Directed by Chris Lightbody & Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.  

Starring Kate Miller, Kay Cunning, Case Walker, Lexi Underwood, Jenna Karan, Jonathan Jason Green. 

USA, 202,6 83 mins

Reviewed as part of Tubi FrightFest 2026

Probably the only horror film this year in which Haddaway’s ‘What Is Love?’ is a plot point and selecting “Undiscovered Gems” in a karaoke contest can save your life, this is a modest, endearing horror-comedy about analogue entertainment gone rogue.

After a 2012 opening in which a sing-along to ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ ends with an eyeball falling in someone’s drink, a covers band head to the middle-of-nowhere, California for a wedding and, in a cabin so retro there’s a hamburger phone, discover a “Song-a-long” old karaoke machine. We know it’s evil because its speakers glow like malevolent eyes when playing old favourites like ‘I’m Sexy and I Know It’…even when unplugged.

A likeable cast have fun with the material, and the script by co-director Chris Lightbody and Spencer Yaras delivers amusingly flippant dialogue (“You haven’t been together that long so…”) confirming that, just because some of your friends are dead, you might well still get the munchies during a party. There’s an excellent Zac Efron joke, endearing leads and some especially charming old-school menus (“Select Your Death”), though it’s a shame a significant amount of the gore is low-rent CGI rather than the glorious old-school practical FX the premise deserves.

Steven West