Tune In Tuesday: The Evil Within (2017)

by Buzz Drainpipe

This is it, folks—the final Tune In Tuesday. And what better way to end the series than with a cursed object from my own life: a DVD that sat, unblinking, on my shelf for seven years like some kind of plastic time bomb from the underworld.

Picture it: 2018. Office Secret Santa. I barely knew the person who drew my name. I can only assume they asked around, got some vague answer like “oh yeah, he’s into weird horror stuff,” and grabbed something off a discount rack at Target. That something was The Evil Within (2017).

One look at the cover—generic demon face, bad Photoshop fire, the kind of tagline that smells like Axe body spray—and I made a snap judgment: this looks terrible. Onto the shelf it went, where it remained, untouched and unloved, for nearly a decade.

Then, fate intervened.

Earlier this year, I stumbled onto a podcast episode talking about the film’s insane backstory. A labor of obsession that spanned 15 years. Written, directed, and funded by a wealthy heir named Andrew Getty—yes, that Getty—who slowly descended into isolation, addiction, and madness while trying to bring his nightmarish vision to life. By the time the film was finished, Getty was dead, and the whole thing had become an urban legend of cursed cinema.

And suddenly, I froze mid-listen. Wait… that sounds familiar.
I ran to my shelf. Pulled out that old DVD.
Holy. Shit. It’s that movie.

Since then, I’ve watched it three times. I’ve gone down YouTube rabbit holes, read essays, dug through behind-the-scenes interviews. I still can’t decide if it’s genius, idiocy, or both—a cracked-mirror masterpiece that could only have been made by someone completely unchained from studio logic or sanity.

It’s a movie about a man haunted by his own reflection, which feels poetically apt: Getty’s art reflecting his breakdown, his dreams eating him alive. The imagery veers from the grotesque to the surreal, like a community-theater Jacob’s Ladder directed by someone possessed by the ghost of David Lynch’s boom operator. It’s uneven, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s pure.

And here’s what’s been gnawing at me: what are the odds that this was random? That my 2018 Secret Santa—a total stranger—just happened to gift me this cursed object? What if, deep down in the office cubicle maze, there was another bad-movie cryptkeeper like me? Someone who saw that title and thought, Yes. He’s one of us.

Maybe the film chose me. Maybe the Secret Santa was a messenger. Or maybe that’s just what happens when you stare too long into the abyss of late-night horror DVDs—you start to see yourself in the monsters.

Either way, The Evil Within became my accidental masterpiece, a long-haunted artifact that finally revealed its purpose. A story about madness, reflection, and resurrection—fitting, really, for the final Tune In Tuesday.

Buzz Drainpipe, signing off from the midnight aisles.
Watch what’s watching you.

From Obsession to Oblivion: The Andrew Getty Story

(A Tune In Tuesday Production History Sidebar)

Andrew Getty, grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, spent over a decade and millions of dollars crafting The Evil Within, his singular horror vision. What began in the late ’90s as a personal project—under the working title The Storyteller—spiraled into a full-blown obsession.

Getty personally designed elaborate animatronics and optical effects, rewriting scenes for years while tinkering in his mansion. The project ballooned into a 15-year ordeal marked by erratic behavior, substance abuse, and perfectionist mania.

He died suddenly in 2015, before the film could be released. Two years later, producer Michael Luceri completed and distributed the finished cut under its final title. The result is both a cinematic curiosity and a tragic artifact—an unfiltered transmission from one man’s decaying psyche, preserved in digital amber.

When the screen flickers, you can almost feel the static of obsession burning through.


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