Let’s get this out of the way: Simon Says is not a movie. It’s a public service announcement reminding us why you don’t let Crispin Glover near sharp objects, siblings, or film sets without adult supervision. It’s a slasher flick that wants to be edgy, creepy, and shocking but instead feels like a fever dream written by someone who inhaled glue fumes in a Spirit Halloween aisle.
If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scooby-Doo had an unplanned child, and then Crispin Glover raised it on nothing but expired Mountain Dew and VHS tapes of his own Letterman appearances, the result would be Simon Says.
The Plot (If You Can Call It That)
Five teenagers—Kate, Zack, Vicky, Riff, and Ashley—go camping. Immediately, you know they’re screwed. Camping in horror movies has the same mortality rate as chain-smoking in an oxygen tent.
They meet two weird locals, Pig and Garth, whose names alone should have told them to run back to civilization. Instead, they mosey into town and encounter Simon and Stanley, played by Crispin Glover doing his best impression of “what if Norman Bates also did improv comedy?”
Things unravel quickly. Ashley is murdered, her body parts turned into arts-and-crafts projects. Riff and Vicky die in the woods because apparently Crispin Glover was contractually obligated to kill anyone with a functioning personality. Zack tries to be the hero but winds up in a ghillie suit cosplay death trap. And Kate, our Final Girl, spends most of the runtime screaming, tied up, or trying to seduce Crispin Glover—which, let’s be honest, is scarier than any slasher villain.
The “twist” is that Simon and Stanley are the same person. Yes, the entire movie is just Crispin Glover arguing with himself in the woods like a deranged mime on a meth binge.
Crispin Glover: A National Treasure or National Threat?
There are two kinds of people: those who find Crispin Glover terrifying, and those who have never seen Crispin Glover. In Simon Says, he dials his weirdness past 11 and into a dimension where Nicolas Cage would politely ask him to tone it down.
He screams, he whispers, he contorts his body like he’s auditioning for Cirque du Psychopath. It’s the kind of performance that makes you wonder: was this acting, or did they just follow him around for a weekend and edit in teenagers later?
The movie clearly thinks it’s giving us an iconic horror villain, like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Instead, we get Crispin Glover in coveralls, alternating between murder and monologues about “dream girls” like he’s both Ted Bundy and your high school poetry teacher.
The Teenagers: Discount Store Victims
Let’s talk about our doomed spring breakers. They’re less “characters” and more “meat with catchphrases.”
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Kate (Margo Harshman): The Final Girl. She survives by sheer stubbornness, not skill. Imagine a cat stuck in a plastic bag—panicked, loud, occasionally clever, but mostly irritating.
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Zack (Greg Cipes): The wannabe hero whose main achievement is cosplaying as Stanley before being set on fire. Honestly, his burning scene is the first time I cared about anyone in this movie, mostly because it temporarily lit up the screen better than the actual cinematography.
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Vicky, Riff, and Ashley: Cannon fodder. If you blink, you’ll miss their character arcs, mostly because they don’t have any. One exists to get chopped up, one exists to get skewered, and one exists to prove that bad decision-making is contagious.
By the time Kate hides inside Zack’s corpse like a demented tauntaun from Star Wars, you’re not rooting for her survival. You’re rooting for the sweet release of credits.
The Gore: Spirit Halloween Clearance Bin
You’d think a slasher movie with Crispin Glover would lean into gruesome kills, but Simon Says manages to make gore look like low-budget performance art. Heads roll, limbs fly, blood splatters—and yet it all feels cheaper than a bottle of ketchup at a diner.
Ashley’s “doll” corpse, stitched together like a Build-a-Bear from Hell, is supposed to be shocking. Instead, it looks like something a drunk college kid would leave on your lawn as a prank.
When Zack is burned alive, it should be horrific. Instead, it’s filmed with all the emotional weight of a barbecue commercial. Somewhere between the plastic flames and Zack’s squeals, I half-expected a narrator to say: “Brought to you by Kingsford Charcoal.”
The Ending: Crispin Glover Needs a Hug (And Maybe Restraining Orders)
The movie ends with Kate killing Simon, or at least thinking she does. He vanishes because slashers can never truly die—they linger like bad sequels and fungal infections.
Then, in a twist so unnecessary it feels like a dare, the film shows Kate tied up again, nursing twins, while Simon smirks over his underground lair. It’s supposed to be terrifying. Instead, it feels like Crispin Glover pitched it during a fever dream and the producers were too afraid to say no.
The implication is clear: there will be more killings. The unspoken truth is clearer: no one wanted a sequel.
The Real Horror: This Movie Was Made at All
Here’s the scary part: someone funded this. Multiple someones. There were investors, producers, grips, and craft services people who all woke up, drove to set, and helped Crispin Glover yell at himself in the woods. And then, someone at Fantastic Fest said, “Yes, let’s premiere this. Audiences will love it.”
That’s the real horror. The slasher nonsense is just background noise.
Final Thoughts: A Bloody Mess Without the Fun
Simon Says tries to be a mix of psychological horror, slasher carnage, and Crispin Glover’s one-man show. Instead, it’s an endurance test. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being cornered at a party by a guy who insists on explaining his screenplay about “duality” while eating all the guacamole.
It could have been fun if it leaned into camp. Instead, it takes itself just seriously enough to be boring, but not seriously enough to be scary. It’s like watching someone try to juggle chainsaws and only managing to drop them on their feet.
The only winners here are Crispin Glover’s fans, who now have another bizarre entry in his career to point to when explaining why he’s both terrifying and amazing. The losers? Everyone else.
Final Verdict: Simon Says is a slasher film where the scariest part is realizing Crispin Glover got paid for it.
Rating: 2 out of 10 ghillie suits—and that’s being generous, because one point goes to the sheer audacity of Crispin Glover’s existence.
