If you inherited a house located
over a water tank full of human sized water monsters, what would you do?
Inheriting a free piece of expensive real estate with spectacular views is like a
universal fantasy – you get a nice vacay, some money to pay off debts, and a chance
to reconnect with nature. Until you find out about the murders. And the monsters sleeping
only feet below the foundation of your house, just waiting for the right moment to leave their
watery breeding den and hunt you down as prey.
If you inherited a house located
over a water tank full of human sized water monsters, what would you do?
I’m going to break down the mistakes made, what you should do, and how to beat
the SEWER LIZARDS in THE TANK.
Welcome to the late 70s, the decade brought to
you by disco, the color brown, and a whole lotta qualuudes. Fascism is a thing of the past and the
future, and everyone’s wrapped in their paisley bell bottoms dancing barefoot to the BeeGees.
Jules and Ben run a pet shop in San Francisco. The sort of place where rats routinely escape
their cages forcing you to lay belly down on the grody aisle floor covered in bird droppings
and the axolotls are so stressed they eat each other. Their daughter Reia’s just entered
that phase where everything turns into a question and she keeps trying to sneak
puppies out in her coat – who hasn’t?
Not gonna lie, this seems like a pretty sweet
setup…aside from those San Francisco rent prices, which leave them constantly strapped and overdrawn
at their bank. Things are so tight Jules went to veterinary school AS A SIDE HUSTLE. So glad to see
things have changed so much in the last 45 years.
After they close down shop for the day, the
diabeetus cat walks in. He’s an estate lawyer with news about Ben’s mom. In addition to being
clinically committed multiple times in her life, she also casually forgot to mention she
and her husband owned prime real estate on the Oregon coast. That is top shelf insanity.
Also, enjoy those back taxes, Ben. You thought you were in dire financial straits before…
What, that WW2 bunker cosplaying as a location in Alice in Borderland?
Their new dream home is suffocated with weeds and caked in lead-based asbestos paint.
Relax – it’s the 70s. They don’t even know that’s a thing yet. And no one here is living long enough
for it to be a problem. Good thing they planned ahead and brought a gold hearse with them.
Turns out aside from looking like the hovel of a color-blind bog witch, the house is in pretty
decent condition. It’s even got a sweet deck overlooking Hobbit’s Bay and a spring-fed water
tank full of demon crap. I don’t know about you, but all I’m seeing are dollar signs here.
Time to HGTV the crap outta this place.
But maybe check out the upper floor
first before filming your audition for sewage wars. Maybe bring a flashlight…?
Upstairs, they discover the windows have been nailed shut. A little weird, but not that
uncommon in seasonal homes or those that need winter windows. It’s just too bad they miss
the light wildlife damage on the window. I guess we’re just lucky whatever clawed at
the window didn’t know how to break it.
Ben’s mother was a huge fan of true crime
subscription boxes – the whole place is littered with scraps of eerie newspaper clippings
and old journals related to the events that happened in this house right before Ben was born.
Is it just me, or has the newspaper clipping thing never made sense? Imagine stopping in the middle
of a tragic, scary emergency to delicately cut out newspaper articles to store in a shoebox for
future generations to find. You know what, I’m wrong. Those serial killer stories aren’t going
to scrapbook themselves and how else am I going to confuse and scare my grandkids after I’m gone?
Apparently Hobbit’s Bay has seen more than its fair share of action. At the turn of the century,
an old whaling ship crashed on the beach.
Yeah, I’d disappear too. I’m not getting lashed
because drunk old Pirate Joe ran us aground.
Jules and Ben discover that Ben’s mom had
more secrets than a marine coming back from Bangkok. Half the papers in here are about the
mysterious deaths of Ben’s dad and older sister Rosie. Old police reports say they drowned
just off the beach and their bodies were never recovered…but suspicions fell on Ben’s very
pregnant mom before the search had even ended.
Jules finds his mom’s torn up journal going
over her last few days in the house. You know it’s going to be a tragic backstory when they go
with “Underworld gray blue” for the flashback.
Before his dad disappeared, someone tried to
scare the family away from the bay by mailing them all the Zodiac killer’s first drafts.
For some reason, receiving some local’s printed twitter feed inspired daddy dearest to open up
the water tank under the house and vanish into it. Eight days later, their daughter Rosie
disappeared too. Apparently, whatever’s hunting here doesn’t have a taste for pregnant
chicks which means these things don’t like two for one specials – they truly are monsters.
In the night, Reia wakes to find something big pressing on the floor beneath her room, leaving
indentations in the carpet like a shark’s fin.
So there’s just like no floor under this carpet?
She runs upstairs to wake her parents. The thing outside makes no attempt to be quiet.
Clatters and guttural growls drive Jules and Ben downstairs, then outside to
look for whatever’s making the noises.
Um…you two do realize you’re in the pacific
northwest, right? The land of moose, grizzlies, and sasquatches. All of those will mess your
crap right up. Whatever’s moving around out there sounds huge and hungry, a combination
we do not need to be investigating right now.
Ben emerges onto the deck through a door that was
just left wide open. Just…why? If it’s not bears, it’s rabbits. Deer. Weasels. Chipmunks.
Squirrels. Rats. Enjoy waking up to a bobcat munching on your dog at the dinner table.
Jules follows the sounds of Darth Vader having an asthma attack to the front door, and out into
the woods. Just remember to throw that lantern directly at the bear’s face, Jules. That should
buy you an extra couple of seconds to flee.
Look, is this weird glottal purring giving
me Jurassic Park flashbacks? Yeah it is. But even porcupines growl. Mountain lions
scream like a woman being murdered. Don’t go outside just in case it’s the latter, but I’m not assuming this is a human-hunting
cryptid until I see it for myself.
We could draw it out of hiding pretty easily
anyway. Just take a hotdog or burger – whatever we brought with us – and tie it to a rope
or string with bells, or silverware in the pinch. Then hang it within sight of the house
and wait. When the monster comes a’ringin’, we can see what we’re actually dealing with.
In the morning, Jules is feeling unease about the house, and that’s before she finds
Ben fiddling with the generator in the shed…despite the shed being filled with
volatile ammonium nitrite rich fertilizer..
Oh yeah, and there’s a weird musty cave under
the house masquerading as a water tank.
Why not both? Just wait until you find
your dad’s secret red room, Benny boy.
Ben gets the old water pipe to the spring working,
offering a little blood sacrifice in the process, before he discovers that the Xenomorph from those
old documentaries made it to earth after all.
Outside, Reia notices the lid to the tank is off
and screams when she hears something writhing and growling in the dark. Call me crazy, but if I
found this aborted xenomorph in my water tank, I’d buy stock in Evian. The water’s polluted with
fish crap. We need to assume from here on out that that tank needs to be cleaned by a professional
before any of us drinks from it, underground spring or no. Unless you’re into that flavor.
A woman calls out to the family and introduces herself as Miriam, a local real estate agent
already fantasizing about how she’s gonna spend her five percent commission rate. She tells them
that she’s already located a buyer willing to pay more than these two have ever made in their
lives for the land. But because she’s clearly a self sabotager, she also tells them the land’s
been cursed since as early as the 1700s, when an earthquake ripped through the bay and people
started disappearing into holes in the ground.
Again, definitely sus…but to be fair, the United
States is holier than swiss cheese. Jordan Peele even made a movie about how many caves there
are here. People falling into holes is the price you pay to live with a view like this.
Jules is THRILLED to sell the place. Ben seems reluctant. Remove the fish monsters lurking
in the deep and I would be too. I’d leave offerings to the old gods for a sweet slice of
coastal real estate like this. Heck, carve out a five acre plot for yourselves and sell the
rest and you’ll have the best of both worlds.
Miriam tells them to think on the deal, then
shleps the mile up the road back to where she parked her car in the middle of the forest. Of
course, it gets stuck in the mud IMMEDIATELY…and something races by in the underbrush.
DANG. You gotta admire that no-delay stealth, no hesitation at all. This is a predator
pure and simple…at least right now, while dealing with a side character.
The thing makes quick work dragging her away and clawing her to death. Tough way to go…
In the middle of the night, Jules hears something downstairs, stalking the perimeter of the
house. She edges her way to the kitchen.
Oh God! It’s jabba the hutt.
Ben rushes in a second too late to see anything. But the next day, his spring
water has turned a lovely shade of crap black, forcing him to enter the water tank that’s
now chest deep with fish monster soup.
Um…maybe it’s time to call a professional,
Ben. Any roto-rooter guy will do.
He reaches down to unclog the
pump and pulls something out, right before he’s jump scared by a gutted
raccoon carcass. He shows it to Jules and says it must have drowned…but in what world do
drowned rats rips their own stomachs open, Ben?
He also shows Jules the bundle from the pipe
– it contains jewelry from his missing sister, Rosie. Jules tells him they have to call
the police to check the tank and Ben finally agrees to head for town for reinforcements.
Along the way, Ben finds Miriam’s abandoned car and a blood trail leading off the road…all
the way to Miriam’s flayed corpse. Guess our predator friend was in the mood for guts, or
maybe it left the rest as bait for larger prey.
Ben can’t keep his own guts down – I hope I
don’t have to say this, but don’t puke at a crime scene…otherwise it’ll become YOUR crime scene.
Ben runs back to the car to radio for help.
SHUT THE Dang DOOR. You just saw a woman’s body
disemboweled not fifty feet away from her car with the open door. No, let’s just assume the thing
that ate her is too full to finish us off too.
Back at the house, Jules discovers a
trail of wet squelchy footprints leading to a locked room on the main floor, ignoring
the back door, which is standing wide open.
Jules finds a set of keys and opens what turns out
to be Rosie’s old room. It’s there that she finds the rest of Ben’s mom’s journal detailing the
night something tried to break into the house.
Wind blows the door closed, locking her in.
She hears growling and sees a shadow under the door. She bashes out the window and races
through the back door, sliding on a puddle before she sprints up to the bedroom.
Ben arrives and closes the doors. He goes upstairs and tells Jules he radioed the
sheriff who told him to lock the doors and wait for him to arrive. An excellent idea…if
you hadn’t let the monster already come into your home and hide away somewhere in here.
Jules reveals she found out the truth about what happened to Ben’s dad and sister
– his mother lied about the drownings.
Holy crap that’s cold blooded.
Running while you can still hear the monsters feasting on your own kid.
In her last diary entry, Ben’s mom tells whoever finds the journal to run. OR – and stay with me
here – maybe you could have sold this place a long time ago so no one you knew ever had a reason
or curiosity to come here in the first place.
I get trying to protect other people…but
hiding this land doesn’t erase it from existence. I bet your silence killed a
couple dozen granola hikers and German tourists in the decades since you left, mom.
Jules and Ben make quick time packing…but Ben hears a noise and assumes it must be the
sheriff. How about we wait until we hear a human voice call out to us, Ben.
Where the heck are you going Ranger Rick? Did some spore in the forest infest
your brain with stupid idiot disease? You were doing relatively well until now.
The sheriff rolls up outside. The road ahead is blocked by a downed tree – every psycho
killer and swamp monster’s best friend. He gets back in the car to grab a flashlight and LEAVES
HIS CAR DOOR WIDE OPEN LIKE AN INVITATION.
Godzilla accepts. This thing looks
like the Demigorgon from Stranger Things screwed the thing from Dreamcatcher.
The sheriff reaches for his revolver, but he isn’t quick enough. The monster bites
into his arm. He fires wildly and with zero accuracy. Dude doesn’t even graze it. The beast
tackles him out of the car. Ben hears the attack and comes running…but by the time he arrives…
This is why we don’t run through the woods at night. That place belongs to the night bozo now.
Dude doesn’t even try to help. Ben zoinks outta there faster than Shaggy and
Scooby. Can’t say that I blame him.
When he gets back to the house, he double checks
the doors WHICH ARE STILL UNLOCKED and tells Jules the sheriff was killed by some kind of reptile.
Jules wants to bail, just dart for the car and go. Not ideal, considering the road is
slowly turning into an auto lot for the recently murderized. Also not ideal because this
thing seems to only come out at night…and it is currently pitch black out there in a forest
you don’t know where your only means of escape is a gold hearse with two wheel drive. But,
it’s not a bad idea if we prepare properly.
Ben wants to lure this thing back into the water
tank and then blow it up using the fertilizer in the shed. Bro…that’s a lotta deadly steps in a
row. First you gotta get that fertilizer in there, then you have to lure the beast, seal it in,
and set fire to the large cavity UNDER the house your family is currently using as shelter.
That’s one way to demolish a house. You don’t even know how deep that cave is or whether
there are gas pockets just waiting for the right spark to blow up the entire coastline.
Even if you manage to arrange all that – ALL THAT – if you spend more than four seconds
thinking about what you’ve learned so far, you know you have more than one of those
things to kill. You poked and prodded one of its dead misshapen offspring, remember?
Yes, some reptile and amphibious species have been known to undergo parthenogenesis, a form of
a reproduction where a female produces without a male, but it’s rare enough that even in these
bonkers circumstances, I’d still assume there are at least two sewer salamanders, if not more.
Heck, if they ARE egg-laying amphibians…there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of them.
Besides, do they even WANT into the house in the first place? If they do, they’re
taking their sweet time about it. They haven’t even broken a window yet.
It would’ve been nice to grab the sheriff’s gun before you bolted back here, but
a windowless barricaded room, kitchen knives, and some torches made from broken chair
legs would probably tide us over to the morning when we could beat a hasty retreat
without the Hunger Game mutts on our tail.
The other tool here they never use is their boom
box. These creatures are blind and seem to hunt by vibration, both noise and movement. Jules and
Ben could create a simple distraction for them by turning the boombox to an AM talk radio station
and locking it in a far corner of the house, in a room they partially barricaded, to keep
the monsters’ attention off them while they silently hide in another room or bolt for the
car strapped with torches, knives, and pitchforks for protection. And that handy dandy propane
flamethrower Jules MaGyvered out of thin air.
Ben runs for the shed and creates a makeshift
fertilizer plant. A monster screeches nearby and he beelines for the water tank.
W-Why are you going down there, Ben? You could not pay me enough…and at this point,
I feel like you just like it down there, bro.
He finds the sheriff’s body before shutting off
the water and crawling deeper into the cave. One of the creatures watches from the water nearby.
Back in the house, whatever spore infected Ben’s brain has clearly gotten into Jules.
Something bangs on the locked bedroom door AND SHE JUST OPENS IT. Dear God, can ONE
person not do the dumb thing, just once? I mean I’m glad the dog’s okay, but come on.
In the cave, Ben lights the shortest fuse I’ve ever seen on his bomb and narrowly
crawls back to the main tank before it explodes. It’s pitiful…which is lucky for him and
the rudehead lizard already in the tank with him.
He tries to fight it off with his flashlight,
but at the ladder, it pulls him under again and tears into his stomach. I mean, I know
you’re not dead yet Ben, but the bacteria in Komodo dragon bites kill people all the time,
so…enjoy your painful primordial infection death.
Up in the bedroom, the monsters suddenly
attack. Jules tries to barricade the door, but it’s too little too late. One monster
sends the bookshelf down on top of her, while another finally breaks the window
and steals Reia. Ben’s too wounded to stop it from dragging her into the tank
Jules tosses what she can at the monster that’s looking more and more like a seal crossed
with a graboid, until the lantern finally scares it away. Downstairs, she pulls Ben to safety
and Hail Mary’s a plan to save Reia.
Great. So how about we HARD poison the water
in the tank before we go down there, eh? We need substances that are toxic to amphibians –
like household laundry detergents, weed and pest killers and fertilizer. Some pesticides can
kill frogs within an hour of spraying. Look, I don’t WANT to cause an ecological disaster
here…but I also don’t want to crawl into a pool full of vicious mutant salamanders where they
have the upper hand. And they definitely do.
Jules enters the water tank and quickly becomes
cornered by two of them. She pours chemicals into a laughably small circle around her and holds
a pitch fork like a weapon…but it’s barely seconds before one of them slips toward her,
unseen in the water, and drags her underneath.
She gets up once before it yanks her down and
bites into her neck. She’s lost her pitch fork. With nothing else, she stabs it with the shattered
end of her torch. She dives for her pitch fork and the second beast attacks, rag dolling her in its
mouth like a leopard seal with a penguin.
Awesome. Two down, hundreds to go…and
now you don’t have a torch either.
By lighter light, Jules
crawls deeper into the cave, listening as monsters call to each other
in the darkness. She finds Reia sitting by the literal kiddie pool and tells her to go,
right before the second wave shows up.
Don’t mind us. We know you’re there.
We’re just gonna wait to chase you.
Jules pulls her secret weapon – a hand held
propane tank. She loosens the top and uses it as a flamethrower to keep the closest monsters
at bay, but it doesn’t last long. She and Reia escape from the water tank and she heaves
the lid closed. They hoof it to the car, where Jules pockets the sheriff’s pistol
and discovers the keys are missing.
Jules goes back for Ben leaving Reia
to deal with the whole mutant family.
Why are all the mesy windows on every car
in this movie open? A monster crawls through the car after Reia, forcing her out. When
Jules gets Ben and Reia back in the car, the monster leers through the open back hatch
window and Jules blasts its head off.
This has been an emotional anti-reptile ad for us
all, but if you’re ever chased out of your home by the local predator species, just cry ON THE WAY to
the hospital. You know, cuz your husband’s still bleeding out like Mr. Orange in the backseat.
These bitey boys were pretty hardcore, all things considered, and plot armor saved
this family more times than Brad Pitt’s in World War Z. But, the sewer salamanders
only seem to attack the house after Ben’s fertilizer bomb goes off in the caves.
It’s possible that if they had remained inside and kept their danged doors actually shut
for once that they could have made it through the night and escaped during the day. OR, they could
have tried luring the monsters away with sound or meat to beat a hasty retreat to their car.
Whether they survive or not comes down to how arbitrary the monsters are about
attacking, but all things considered, NOT going into the water tank with a half
baked pipe bomb was definitely the smarter move. They would have likely survived the night
without needly bites all over their bodies.
For those reasons, I think THE TANK was Beaten.
And remember…just hire a professional.
