The Horror Movie That Inspired the Lonely Island’s Jump-Scare Short

Saturday Night Live has had a number of spooky sketches over the years — from Ichabod Crane quizzing the Headless Horseman about paranormal fellatio, to the campfire horror story about lunching with a 22-year-old aspiring filmmaker. Absolutely terrifying. 

While these examples were obviously pretty silly, one of the Lonely Island’s Digital Shorts actually featured some pretty hair-raising jump scares. A lot of them. Like, the whole friggin’ thing is jump scares. 

“The Mirror” from a March 2008 episode found Elliot Page being constantly startled by the sudden appearance of a buck-toothed ghoul with a mysterious head wound (Andy Samberg) in the bathroom mirror. It was all a dream, but then it turns out to have been Samberg’s character’s nightmare. No wait, it was a nightmare being shared by Dracula and his live-in partner Debbie Lieberstein?

Not surprisingly, “The Mirror” was inspired by a horror movie, but oddly enough, it was a horror movie that in no way featured any bathroom mirrors. “This one was born of my real fear of that happening,” Samberg revealed on this week’s The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. “I was living alone at the time. Akiva (Schaffer) had moved in with his then girlfriend. We had gotten duped into watching The Descent.”

The Descent, of course, is the terrifying (not to mention claustrophobic) 2005 horror movie about a good old fashioned cave exploring trip that gets ruined by some pesky bloodthirsty subterranean mutants. 

Despite the fact that there are no bathroom mirrors in The Descent (or any bathrooms for that matter), the movie freaked Samberg out, and reactivated his fear of bathroom mirrors from other movies. The mirror-based jump scare has been used in countless horror films, including forgettable schlock as well as classics like An American Werewolf in London.

“There’s no mirror scares in (The Descent),” Samberg recalled, “but I’d seen enough things that mirror scares were like a thing in my life. Also, we’re all sleep-deprived, and I just felt like a lunatic. I had a lot of moments of getting ready for bed and being like, ‘Goddammit, if there’s someone in the mirror I’m gonna fucking freak out.’”

Samberg also admitted that his penchant for asking SNL coworkers to join him on trips to the bathroom during late-night writing sessions was motivated, not just by a desire for company, but also because he was afraid. So the Hot Rod star decided to conquer his fears by writing a sketch that rendered them ridiculous. “I was like, I’m gonna beat this thing by making it a goof,” Samberg explained. 

It’s unclear whether or not Samberg was similarly tormented by fears of being on a boat, dicks in boxes or Japanese cuisine fed through a men’s room glory hole.

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