Humongous
Tagline: "It's loose... It's angry... And it's getting hungry!"
Director: Paul Lynch
Release Year: 1982
Runtime: 94 min
Streaming Platforms:
Plot Summary: The monstrous offspring of a violent crime grows up in seclusion on a remote island, where a boatful of hapless teens have shipwrecked, unaware of what's lurking in the woods.
Holidays:
- Labor Day
Plot section not found on Wikipedia.
Notes
Humongous opens in 1946 during a Labor Day weekend party. A woman named Ida Parsons gets brutally assaulted, her dogs maul the attacker, and the film's horror premise is born. Instead of rest and relaxation, the film twists "labor" into something darker—dealing with trauma and surviving in isolation.
Thirty-six years later, young adults crash their boat near Dog Island during another Labor Day getaway. They've literally landed at the site of generational trauma, now home to Ida and her feral son—the "Humongous." They're seeking classic holiday fun but get cursed history instead.
Humongous isn't perfect—it's slow, murky, and the monster reveal disappoints. But it uses Labor Day meaningfully. While other films were claiming Halloween and Christmas, this quietly made Labor Day its twisted territory.
The film subverts slasher tropes too. Final girl Sandy survives through empathy, not purity. But her "victory" is hollow—she ends up traumatized like Ida, continuing the cycle.
Why It Works
The movie asks: what happens when your holiday becomes the anniversary of trauma? Every Labor Day weekend becomes a reminder rather than release. It's one of the only Labor Day horror movies ever made, and that alone makes it worth watching—flaws and all.