Top Ten New To Me in 23

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I’m about two and a half years into this blogsperiment? Blogventure? Bloject? (Ugh – I think these are just getting worse and were never necessary to begin with) And in that time, I’ve had good runs (last January – April, I managed a new post every week) and I’ve had drier spells (lately, I’ve averaged a post every two weeks). The blog has given me opportunity and impetus to finally check out loads of work I’ve been meaning to get around to, but just never had, and it’s also given me the excuse to devote some regular time to thought – what am I going to discuss this week? What did I think about this work? What, quality notwithstanding, did I find interesting in it? Why did (or didn’t) I enjoy a given moment of awfulness? What bigger topics do I have thoughts about or do I want to think about? There’s a lot of thinking about thinking about thinking. Sometimes there’s more of that than writing…

And so, at the turn of the year, as everyone is making best of lists, looking back at the year that’s passed or looking forward to the future to come, it has become my tradition (of only two and a half years – stop fiddling on my roof) to do a list as well – but it’s tricky. I can’t in good conscience do a “best of” list for 2023 releases because I’m terrible at keeping up with new stuff (out of the 123 horror movies I watched in 2023, only 11 were new releases). Past that, choosing the ten best to write about is rough because most of the best horror content I’ve watched this year, I’ve already done posts on (83 movies in 2023) – so in a way, these are all leftovers: The Ten Best Things I’ve Watched This Year That I Hadn’t Seen Before And Haven’t Written About Yet. It’s a mouthful. Also not a catchy title. Ah well…

In case you’re wondering, Silent Night, Deadly Night IV isn’t on the list (I wrote about it last time). But I figure she’s holding up TEN fingers in a form that is NEW for her, so there you go…

Some of these I’d watched planning to do a full post about them but for whatever reason I just didn’t make it happen. In that case, I hereby reserve the right to return to any and all of these in the future for longer analysis (I don’t know who I’m submitting this claim to, but it is thus declared). Some of these I really enjoyed, but just didn’t feel the urge to commit three thousand words to them, and so here I can briefly sing their praises without the burden of deeper consideration.  So yeah – these will be short (in some cases, I watched them once almost a year ago and we’ll see what’s stayed with me). Also, this isn’t a countdown – these are in no particular order – just that in which I think of them.

But that’s probably enough set up. Let’s get to it, shall we? For a change, as these will all be short texts, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I’m not exactly making any promises.

Curtains (1983)

What an absolute blast! This Canadian slasher with a troubled production history (directors coming and going and taking their names off the project – resulting in wildly divergent tones and, shall we say, odd plotting) has a bit of everything: creepy dolls; that scene on the ice with the hag masked killer, the sickle, and the slow motion skating; a head in a toilet; the total defiance of physics (how can you get knocked out of an upstairs window only to crash into the downstairs window?); some legitimately suspenseful sequences, better acting than it probably deserved (Samantha Eggar is great, John Vernon, most recently mentioned in my write up of Killer Klowns from Outer Space, has to be one of the all-time greatest portrayers of cinematic bastards, and I was so happy to see Lynne Griffin, Clare from Black Christmas), and a twist ending that for my money, really lands. And for all that it is more than a little stylistically messy, it even has strong contemporary resonance – a #MeToo movie thirty years ahead of its time.

We follow Samantha, a famous actress researching her next big role which will require her to play “crazy” so her director, Jonathan Stryker, a real prince of a guy, has her committed to an institution to “research” the role. He then abandons her there and invites a group of young ingénues to his remote house to “audition” them instead, and by audition, of course I mean psychologically torment them and try to get into their pants. What he’s looking for in the part is a bit of a mystery as the women are professionally, respectively, an actress, an ice skater, a stand-up comedian, a ballet dancer, and a musician. But maybe he’s not even casting, and he just wants a group of attractive women to sleep with and belittle while doing acting exercises. Like I said, a real prince.

Of course, everyone starts dying (I’m pretty sure only one person makes it to the end), and there is a reasonably enjoyable whodunit in puzzling out who’s actually behind all this slashing, as well as a turn at the end that took me by surprise, but I think this is a movie most enjoyed for its idiosyncratic little details rather than the big picture. Really – it’s a hoot.

Sante Sangre (1989)

I was so impressed with this one and really intended to write a full post on it and somehow failed to (I think it just felt so big and worthy that I needed to invest more thought and take the time for another couple of viewings, and that week, I just wasn’t up to the task). One day, I hope I circle back and do so because it is tremendous. In short, it’s about a young man, Fenix, who grew up in a circus where he witnessed his knife throwing father cut off his religious-cult-leading mother’s arms as revenge for her acid-poured-on-crotch revenge on his infidelity with the tattooed lady. After escaping from an asylum, Fenix becomes his mother’s new arms and is compelled by her to carry out a series of murders. In terms of plot, it’s relatively straightforward (relatively), but Alejandro Jodorowski’s carnivalesque, manic, utterly gorgeous and disturbed arthouse horror is anything but.

There is such an overwhelming sense of ritual, of devotion (religious, familial, romantic, sexual, psychotic), of the cruel compulsion to serve what and whom must be served and the nearly completely crushed spirit of an individual trying to assert itself, trying to live its own life, free from the oppression of the holy, of beauty, of family. Heady stuff – but it’s also just so full of life – weird and wild and bloody and baffling. No matter how lofty the ideas at play, this film is never ponderous or weighed down, but is rather a rollercoaster of passion and murder and absurdity and art and lived-in details. I absolutely loved it – easily one of the best films I saw last year, horror or otherwise.

The Ring (1998)

It is embarrassing that it took me so long to finally get around to watching the Japanese original, but I’m so very glad I did. I’d seen the American remake on release (on video, at home, and the moment my roommate and I finished watching, the phone rang…it was only his mom, but still creepy as all get out) and had always heard how good this was, but somehow never before pulled the trigger on it.

Wow. It’s always nice when something lives up to the hype – this really worked for me, even though the remake had been faithful enough that there weren’t too many surprises to be had – but yeah, it still creeped me out. And what’s more, it really lingered with me for a couple of days afterwards – not in the sense of being scared of video tapes (not many of those around these days), but in the mood, the feeling.

I won’t go into the plot much because a) I feel like everyone already knows the basic idea whether they’ve seen it or not (watch a cursed video and die in seven days) and also b) if you haven’t seen it, there are some twists and turns in the final act that really surprised me when I first saw the remake and still land dramatically on finally watching the original. But I will say that the film does something so interesting in combining elements that feel so richly folk horror – urban folklore, old curse, angry ghost, kids creeping each other out with scary stories – combining all that with modernity, with technology, with elements that feel utterly of the “modern world.” Although all of the tech at play here – video tapes, film cameras, and landline telephones have gone the way of the dodo, the idea of viral concepts self-perpetuating through the technology that dominates our lives, the space in which we really live, and haunting us, changing us, dooming us – that idea is as current as could be. It really holds up.

Hellraiser (2022)

This is another one that I mean to write about at greater length. I’d waited for it for quite a while as it took more than a year to finally be rentable on a streaming service where I live (Poland) and I wanted to be a good boy and pay for it. I can’t say that it’s a perfect movie and when I finally go into more detail, I’ll discuss why, but at least the first half felt so much like a Clive Barker story and it really scratched an itch for me, sending me down a rabbit hole of rewatching the first two Hellraiser movies (the only ones that really had Clive’s involvement) and re-reading “The Hellbound Heart” (the novella on which the first film was based).

The intersection of addiction and the compulsion to work the puzzle box, to keep going even if it hurts and is clearly self-destructive, really felt like something out of an early Barker short story, specifically putting me in mind of “The Inhuman Condition,” (the one with the knots) and I liked Riley as a flawed, but compelling protagonist. Furthermore, Roland Voight, the villain of the piece, is such an absolutely Barkerian figure – the hedonistic, amoral playboy art collector seeking out experience beyond limit, and I really liked the visualization of the cenobites, no longer just S&M leather demons (though that is an iconic look and really worked in its own way, bringing a fetishistic sexuality to the first and all subsequent films), but remade into monstrous puzzle boxes themselves, their bodies and souls perpetually held in extremis.

While it’s true that the story somewhat lost me in the second half once they’re all trapped in the house getting picked off one by one, on the whole, it had the right flavor. It gave me a taste of the author who first brought me to the genre, and that was more than worth the watch and the wait.

Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

Sometimes you just have to be in the right mood to appreciate a given film. I’d heard of this years back as a “famously bad,” “so-bad-it’s-good” B-movie, striking for being so terrible even though it’s the first sequel to a bit of a modern classic (I mean once you get to Part III: The Marsupials, you already have lowered expectations – though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that one yet). So, long ago, I gave it a try with a terrible copy available on Youtube and quickly gave up, deeming it not worth my efforts. But then sometime this year it showed up on Shudder and I’m so glad I gave it a second chance cause I absolutely ate it up!

What’s it about? Unsurprisingly, this guy discovers that his dead sister (Karen, the protagonist of the first film) was a werewolf (wouldn’t have guessed that from the title) and therefore has to travel to Transylvania to fight Stirba, the immortal werewolf queen before she can take over the world. Along the way, eyes get popped out, there’s a werewolf orgy, there’s a telepathic mind battle, and surprisingly little stuff that feels like a traditional werewolf story – but who cares? It is brash and fun and so lovably shameless in its sleazy immaturity (infamously, a moment when Stirba tears her shirt off is repeated seventeen times over the closing credits as the theme song plays one last time).

Is it actually a good movie? Maybe not, but who’s to say? Is it frequently laugh out loud absurd in surprising, delightful, cheeky ways? Absolutely! Does the soundtrack basically just feature one song that it plays on repeat constantly? Yeah – but (as I wrote about recently) it’s a banger! Has it got Christopher Lee wearing the most 80s sunglasses imaginable and uttering ridiculous expository dialogue with great, silky voiced gravitas? Oh yeah! And somehow, in spite (and because) of all of its weirdness, is it actually kind of a cool, folksy, rockin’ werewolf (though they kind of seem more like vampires sometimes) flick that, if you’re open to it, is just a party and a half? I really think it is.

Talk to Me (2023)

Hey! A new movie – look at that! I know that this Australian feature already got a lot of buzz this year, but I’ll add to it. A group of teenagers start playing a party game with this weird mummy hand that’s being passed around – you hold the hand and suddenly find yourself face to face with a dead person. It’s creepy and weird as party games go, but it’s also thrilling and wild. The plot kicks in as a girl still in mourning for her mother who’d OD’d two years earlier comes into contact with this addictively sinister item and goes down an unsurprisingly dark path.

Now, I will say that where the story ultimately went didn’t exactly blow me away, but I loved the energy of the early scenes with all of the kids basically getting high on this new party drug (of summoning the dead). As an addiction narrative, it put me in mind of the bit in Trainspotting when Renton narrates, justifying his heroin habit, “What (people) forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid.”

The play with this mysterious object feels like such a dangerous game – and no one understands it. We get no real lore. No exposition (so refreshing). Different kids tell different stories about its origins, but it’s obvious that no one knows anything, and there is an essential mystery which is enticing and cool and scary, and I love that the filmmakers commit to it and don’t ruin things by explaining everything (or really, explaining anything at all). As a viewer, you feel how wrong it is and at the same time how awesome it is too. In the second half, the story took some predictable turns, but the early vibes were eerie and cool enough to earn it a place on this list.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

This is another “wow” movie that I think I watched a second time the very next day. Jodie Foster (maybe 13 at the time of filming) is captivating in her portrayal of Rynn, a precocious teenage girl, living alone in a big house, who seems beset on all sides by adult threats to her life, her freedom, and her autonomy, and who also just might be a sociopath. But even if she is, that’s no matter – I think it’s impossible not to root for her independence and self-assurance.

One could certainly quibble about the genre classification here (maybe it’s a thriller, maybe it’s a mystery, maybe it’s a drama), but there is enough of the unsettling, and the threatening, enough looming doom, for me to happily count this a horror film. Plus, it features a young Martin Sheen as the local child molester, which the town takes as a kind of open secret and does nothing about, who comes to prey on Rynn, and he feels so dangerous and scary – it gets pretty uncomfortable and he’s great in the role.

The whole film is intriguing and unnerving, as Rynn both takes on and is subjected to adult situations and dangers (the treatment of age and sexuality is more than a little disquieting and it’s hard to imagine this being made in quite this way today – but it’s also, I would argue, absolutely central to the character, to the story, to the admittedly controversial idea at the center of the film – that Rynn alone has the right to her own decisions, financial independence, and sexual agency, and that any attempt on the part of “grown-ups” to protect her amounts to a unacceptable violation of her liberty). And the whole time, while I always felt on her side, there was also a mystery at the heart of her character – there is a depth under the surface we can never see. Her clear eyed understanding of the world around her is a kind of power, as is her unbothered willingness to do what she needs to do to assert her right to self-determination. But this power is also dangerous in its way, and she is able to carry out consequential acts without moral compunctions. Still, these same qualities are magnetic; separating her from others in the ‘killer kid’ canon who might be seen as monstrous. On the contrary, she always feels like the most reasonable, mature, qualified figure in the narrative, and any threats she feels the need to dispatch, I wouldn’t begrudge her right to do so. It is a really interesting little movie.

Alligator (1980)

What “right” does any film have to be good? That’s an odd judgment to make. Nevertheless, on watching this giant-alligator-in-the-sewers movie, I immediately felt that it was so much better than it had any right to be, or perhaps simply any need to be. I mean, to be successful, so many elements could have been lacking – if there’s a big alligator eating people, that’s really enough. But this Jaws-esque romp gave me so much more.

Penned by John Sayles, and starring Robert Forster, there is a surprising depth of character and feeling in this otherwise silly but entertaining story of an alligator, brought as a baby from a vacation in Florida home to Chicago where it’s flushed down the toilet and lives in the sewer, feeding on test animals from a lab, which causes it to grow extra large and extra hungry, eventually going on a rampage wherein it eventually consumes the evil scientists inadvertently responsible for its creation as well as the corrupt politicians whose turning a blind eye to corporate malfeasance has made this all possible.

But along the way, we are treated to Forester’s genuinely grounded performance as a world weary cop whose partners keep dying in the line of duty – and who thus carries a great weight of guilt, grief, and exhaustion (we see at least one get got by the gator and it actually lands with real, effective horror notes), a hesitant, tentative romance, alternatingly tender and combative, that develops between him and Marissa, the local herpetologist, and any number of little moments of life and specificity – Marissa’s mother who just won’t stop talking and is somehow both irritating and charming, a delightful short scene in which the cocky big game hunter brought in to take down the gator is being interviewed by an attractive female reporter and flirts with her by performing alligator mating and/or distress calls (sexy, huh?), and Forster’s quiet, gently sad disdain for the scientists he talks to early in the film who are experimenting on cute dogs before furtively discarding their remains in the sewer for giant reptiles to eat.

We also get loads of big puppet work (which is pretty much ok), a small real alligator on miniature sets (which is fun), and wild shifts of tone, like when we cut between the central romance and a kids birthday party where some little boys dressed as pirates make another kid walk the plank before pushing him into a pool where he is brutally and bloodily devoured by the titular creature, or the wedding party filled with rich jerks, where the alligator invades and causes glorious, ridiculous havoc. What fun!

Scream VI (2023)

And we have one more new movie on the list. I’d enjoyed the previous year’s jumpstarting of the dormant franchise, but this entry felt more like its own thing. Sure Gale Weathers is still on the scene, but the story otherwise belongs to the new young cast, and particularly Melissa Barrera’s Sam, and her struggle with her own useful, but nonetheless concerning capability for violence, which she fears may be an inherited trait. This internal conflict has developed over the course of these last two movies and it’s a compelling story (which, sadly, may never be resolved as the next film seems to have been scuppered after Barrera was fired for social media posts about Gaza – Ortega left immediately after, as did Christopher Landon, the director of the upcoming entry).

I think the Scream movies are pretty consistent in their quality (sure, there are ups and downs, but on the whole, they’re pretty solid) and in maintaining the mystery of the identity of the killer (or, more often, killers) each time, and this is no exception (I didn’t exactly love the why this time, but the reveal of who was satisfying). Also, they allow certain characters to make it from one film to the next, such that we can become invested in their survival (of course, characters frequently die, but the others we do get to know and come to like spending time with). I think it was always a strength of the series that the final girl was the star, returning time after time, targeted by new killers, rather than “ghostface,” the voice modulated psycho of the week wearing a store bought Halloween costume. Though the mantel of final girl has changed in this new cycle, this film continues that trend, giving us more time with the new “core four,” all of whom are likeable kids that I’m not hoping to see offed.

But the highlights are clearly a few action/suspense/horror set pieces of great tension and excitement. The series of kills in the cold open kick the mystery off in a refreshing way, the final conflict in the movie theatre/shrine has its thrills and viscerally satisfying brutality, Gale’s fight is high paced and really feels like it could go either way and this could be the last we see of her, and of course, the ladder scene shines as, under attack from the masked killer, all of the kids seek egress from their apartment terrifyingly high in the air. It is tense and scary and just fun. I think the co-directing team of Radio Silence really shined in the last film and in this one with some stand out suspense scenes. It’s a shame they’re not continuing with the series (but after recent developments, one wonders if the series will even continue with itself, or maybe lie dormant for another ten years, before doing another soft-reboot in which they may actually be willing to pay Neve Campbell’s asking price for some 40th anniversary return to the endless trials and tribulations of Sydney Prescott). But whatever (if anything) comes in the future, this was a good night at the cinema and I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen.

Chucky Seasons 1 (2021) & 2 (2022)

And, finally, this one isn’t even a movie. For a while I’d been hearing how good the Chucky show is, but it just wasn’t playing anywhere I had access to, and then finally, over the course of this year, the first two seasons showed up on Shudder (who knows how long I’ll have to wait for the third, currently airing), and it kinda blew me away.

I’ve long respected Don Mancini’s Child’s Play/Chucky movie franchise. The first is a modern classic – really well made, fresh and scary. Then there is such a strong sense of continuity that runs through the rest of the movies, even as they’ve adopted wildly different tones, from straight horror to high camp and back to horror again, with many characters returning over the years, and furthermore, showing evidence of growth and change. And also, it feels special to have such a strong authorial voice that runs through it all. Mancini has only directed the last three films, but he wrote all seven of them and creatively leads the show (though both writing and directing responsibilities are shared with a team as is common on television).

And what a show – I think it manages moments that are properly scary, and it regularly surprised me or even shocked me with brutal turns. You know nobody is safe, but all the same, my jaw fell open more than once at just how willing the show was to let horrible things happen to characters you would expect, following the patterns of pop-culture entertainment, to be inviolable. And then the story really hooked me – in many ways, it follows the sort of tropes one expects of a teen coming-of-age drama: bullying, feeling isolated and weird, romance, in this case between two boys, one of whom has to deal with a homophobic home life, growing up and asserting independence from family – normal teen drama stuff…but…add a killer doll to the mix, add a real sense of constant danger, add wild turns of character carried by top notch actors (the work Jennifer Tilly gets to do in this series is really special – the same goes for Lachlan Watson, who plays Glen and Glenda, Fiona Dourif, and of course, Brad Dourif, whose been voicing Chucky since the beginning), and you get something totally new and exciting. It’s also nice how open and warm hearted the show is towards its young characters’ gender and sexuality at the same time as it can be so harsh and brutal when it feels like it – there’s a tension of tone that strengthens the whole. I also love that all of Chucky’s movement is actual puppetry – apparently digital effects are only used to remove strings or other remnants of the puppeteers from shots, but everything is done by hand – how rare and special – and it’s really well done.

Finally, I just got fully invested in the directions the story would take – it all happens against a backdrop of heartfelt teen romance and angst, but as the antagonist driving the story forward (which can be genuinely affecting), Chucky gets up to surprising plots and ploys and the show consistently kept me guessing. Really, these two seasons are the most fun I’ve had watching a TV show for a long time (it even got me listening to music from the soundtrack which hadn’t happened since I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I laughed, I cried, I got startled, I got shocked, I had a great time. I can’t wait to see the third season someday.

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And there we have it, my ten favorite things of the year that I hadn’t yet written about. I imagine a bunch of these I might return to at greater length – lots of them deserve extra consideration. But either way, these last couple of days, I’ve had fun remembering them all – these might not have made the cut for a full post back during the year, but that is not due to any lack of affection for them on my part. There’s nothing on this list I wasn’t utterly enthusiastic about, both on first viewing and this reconsideration.

And so, that’s enough looking back. Let’s go forward and see what’s to be found in 2024.

Continuing Down the Xmas Hole – Christmas Horror Part II

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Ok – that title just seems dirty, but in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working through a number of Christmas horrors, new and old, that I hadn’t seen yet, seeing (to paraphrase Morpheus) “how deep this chimney goes.” The answer would seem to be, “not terribly deep, but really rather weird.” Each time I crossed my fingers and hoped that I was going to discover a hidden classic, something that would really surprise me and become a new favorite, and…well, that didn’t exactly happen. I can’t make any claim that today’s movies represent the greatest heights of the genre – but hey, they’re not the worst either. And each of them, no matter how odd it gets (and often because of how odd it gets), or how little it comes together as a whole, each of them has something that I genuinely appreciated and enjoyed.

So, you could probably call these ‘minor entries’ in the canon of holiday horror – nothing here holds a candle to heavy hitters like Black Christmas (1974), Christmas Evil (1980), or Gremlins (1984), but we’ve all probably already seen those (and if you haven’t, boy are you in for a treat), and so much of the pleasure of really digging into one genre, or sub-genre for that matter, is finding those peculiar little entries that will never win many awards, but do give our life on earth so much more character. They may not be great. They may not always even be good. They may only pay lip service to the holiday or to horror. But they do make things all that more interesting.

Now, I write this knowing that everyone and their brother is publishing rundowns of Christmas horrors these days (‘tis, as they say, the season), but hey, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea – and it’s what I’ve watched recently, so it’s what I can write about. So, let’s get into it, shall we? I’m pretty sure I’m going to spoil most of these, so be forewarned…

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 3: Better Watch Out (1989)

Honestly, I loved the first half of this odd little picture. It is, in a word, ‘weird,’ and I found myself rather hooked by its peculiarities.  We follow Laura, a young woman who was blinded in a car accident and seems to have some degree of psychic powers. A particularly unscrupulous doctor has been subjecting her to experiments wherein he links her consciousness to that of the comatose Ricky, the killer from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (and brother to Billy, the killer from part 1). He survived getting gunned down at the end of the last flick only to end up in a coma, his Santa hat replaced by the aquarium attached to his head, displaying his murderous brain (he’s also been recast and is played in this installment by genre mainstay Bill Moseley (Chop Top from Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II).

Probably the first ten minutes of the film is an extended dream sequence in which they enter each other’s minds through a series of sterile, institutional corridors filled with Christmas detritus. After this, Laura begins traveling with her brother and his girlfriend to their grandma for Christmas Eve dinner, all the while having horrific visions of Ricky’s thoughts, dreams, and actions (of course he’s now awake, on a fresh killing spree, and coming for her).

For the first roughly 45 minutes, I was totally engaged. The movie was peculiar, but also really specific and honestly kind of fresh. Psychic stuff, dreams, Bill Moseley with exposed brains, hallucinations, and a solid taste of the holiday as we periodically cut over to Grandma happily preparing her home for the young siblings. I even remember thinking at some point, “wow – this is fun and I really have no idea what’s going to happen – that’s great!”

Yeah – I shouldn’t have thought that. Within minutes of entertaining this assessment, Ricky had killed off granny in advance of Laura and her brother arriving, and once they got to grandma’s empty house, the rest of the film was a totally rote slasher – not terrible or anything, but pretty by the book and not all that inspired. The second 45 minutes were, sadly, a bit of a slog.

But everything leading up to that moment, I really enjoyed, so perhaps you will too…

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 4: Initiation (1990)

So having seen part 3, I was intrigued to final check out the only remaining entry in this series I hadn’t seen yet. (Part 1 is satisfyingly grisly, Part 2 is campy fun, and Part 5 is a pretty solid little Pinocchio inflected  Christmas horror about a killer toymaker). Directed by Brian Yuzna (of Society, Bride of Reanimator, and Return of the Living Dead Part 3, among others), this film maintains a small sense of continuity with the rest of the series, but then goes off in some wild new directions, aided by the goopy, fleshy, trippy physical effect work of special effects artist and frequent Yuzna collaborator, Screaming Mad George.

Christmas is almost an afterthought this time in this story of Kim, a young woman striving for respect and autonomy at the newspaper where she works, as she takes the initiative to investigate a recent case of spontaneous combustion, against the patronizing instructions of her chauvinistic boss. This brings her into contact with a coven of witches who conspire to initiate her into the insectoid, flesh melting mysteries of their Lilith worshiping, patriarchy busting, pagan rites, coinciding roughly with the winter solstice. For some reason, they are assisted in this by Ricky (from the last two movies), now played by Clint Howard (Evilspeak, The Ice Cream Man), with his brains once again covered by bone and flesh, and no suggestion that they ever weren’t.

There is a tiny dose of Christmas as she visits her boyfriend’s family in the days leading up to the holiday, where she explains that she’s Jewish and doesn’t celebrate, resulting in rude comments from his conservative, religious dad. Later, on Christmas Eve, she shows up to kidnap his younger brother (while Ricky garrotes his unpleasant parents with Christmas lights) as she needs to sacrifice a male to complete the ceremony – so there – you’ve got a bit of Christmas stuff.

Otherwise, it’s all vaginal larva insertions, vomiting up giant bugs, having fingers melt together into tentacley appendages, legs fusing together until they form a giant segmented tail, and lots of randomly bursting into flames. It is filled with insect gross out horror (the cult worships Lilith, presented here as the source of “all that crawls”); it is sleazy and sexually exploitative (including, for those who would want to be warned of such things, a carnivalesque, ritualized rape scene); and it is peculiar, unique, intriguing, creative, and disturbing. It won’t be for everyone, but I sure can’t say I’ve seen a movie quite like this before, and that singularity does speak in its favor.

The Advent Calendar (2021)

It’s funny – I feel that this French Christmas horror from a couple years back situates its scares and uncanny dread not so much in the Christmas of it all, though it does circle around an evil Advent Calendar – counting down the days to Christmas, but rather in the idea that German stuff (and the language itself) is just really creepy (as I understand it, the tradition of the Advent calendar originates in Deutschland).

Eva is a former dancer, now paralyzed from the waist down, whose friend comes back from Germany with an antique wooden advent calendar as a birthday present. The thing is a little threatening – for example, its back is inscribed with a warning that “If you get rid of this, I’ll kill you” – but the two women laugh it off with the sense that ‘it’s German – of course it’s threatening!’ It’s already December third, so she opens the first couple of doors to find some candy and a series of instructions – basically, if she starts eating the candy, she has agreed to keep opening doors, following instructions, and eating the candy until the end, no matter what happens. Again and again, the instructions say that if she breaks a rule, “I’ll kill you!” What fun!

At first, the candies seem miraculous, causing lovely things to happen – her father suffering from Alzheimer’s momentarily recognizes her, a cute guy gets interested in her, some jerks mysteriously die, she can temporarily walk; but unsurprisingly, it quickly takes a dark turn as the calendar starts demanding sacrifices in exchange for its varied gifts. Also, this tall, thin, Germanic demon thing sometimes shows up and kills anyone who interferes. In theory, this takes Eva on a fraught moral journey as she must do terrible things to both win her desires and simply to stop the German Box Monster from offing her as well.

First, it must be said that there are some cool, inventive moments along the way (a surprising death by dog is a standout example) and the Teutonic monster is sufficiently creepy. Also, it’s all played straight and it takes its story and characters and emotion seriously.

But while I generally enjoyed watching it play out, I did struggle to get past a certain drama and horror dampening sense of inevitability. After an intriguing first act, when things really start spiraling, it felt as if Eva was just moving from one demand to the next with little sense of internal struggle or choice. Perhaps she was just already committed and going on the ride, but I suspect I should have felt more of a bite of tragedy in what she was being called on to do, or conversely, the vicarious thrill of knowing that what she was being given was so great as to justify the costs. I didn’t feel those things. More I felt that a cool set up and a solid horror conceit just hadn’t quite landed satisfyingly (and along the way there were some logical leaps that stuck a bit in my craw).

But I don’t want to come off too negatively. There are plenty of horror moments that work, and even a bit of intentional comedy that doesn’t derail the weight of the events. And it was a spin on a concept I hadn’t exactly seen before. But again, though it is all about this Christmas item, it never feels like Christmas time, or like a Christmas movie. It’s just a spooky German box that keeps threatening to kill you if you don’t eat its chocolate correctly.

Violent Night (2022)

Ok, first off, it must be said that although I tend to cast a really wide genre net, I have trouble considering this a “horror movie,” but I’ve seen it listed on some Christmas horror lists, I watched it recently for the first time, and I rather liked it, so I’m going to write about it anyway. I hope you’ll grant me that indulgence. In its defense, it is very, very violent (it’s in the name).

Like a love child of Die Hard, Bad Santa, and Miracle on 34th Street, this gory, vulgar, sweet hearted concoction features a group of brutal mercenaries infiltrating a wealthy family’s remote estate on Christmas Eve to hold them all hostage as they empty the sizable vaults. But it just so happens that a down on his luck, drunk and embittered St. Nick, recently abandoned by his reindeer, has been stranded in the house, there to deliver a gift to the one good child there who still believes in him even if he no longer believes in himself.

Fortunately, we learn that before he became the perennial gift giver that he is today, Santa used to be a fierce Viking warrior and, to borrow a turn of phrase, he isn’t locked in with the mercenaries – they are locked in with him. And in a cute turn, when he takes a walkie talkie from one of the kidnappers, it allows him to stay in touch through the night with Trudy – the nice little girl, ala John McLane and Sgt. Powell.

A tremendous number of bad guys get their heads crushed, impaled on things, eviscerated, exploded, decapitated, or in one way or another, torn to pieces. The little girl, who just saw Home Alone for the first time, also manages to off a few baddies herself with DIY traps (with more brutal effect than in the popular Christmas comedy). And, most importantly, along the way, Santa learns his requisite Christmas lesson, gets his groove back, and comes to believe in himself, in the holiday, and in the potential goodness of mankind once more. In a reversal of many a Christmas horror flick, this time, the killer Santa is the good guy.

It is all a fun idea and generally well executed, but I think it rests so clearly on the shoulders of David Harbor (Stranger Things), who is just absolutely perfect for the role. He balances the misery, the irreverent, fed up crudeness, the bloodthirsty rage, and the genuinely affecting, earnest sweetness so well. I can’t imagine the movie without him – it’s a great vehicle for his talents and he manages to lift it above its enjoyable, but potentially either saccharine or overly mean spirited premise, allowing it to be both and neither in a really satisfying way. It’s a really fun, if not exactly great, movie – but I have trouble labeling it horror. But, again, Santa kills like a hundred people in this thing, so let’s agree that justifies its place on the list.

Inside (2007)

Ok, so we’re back to France for another movie that, while it’s set on Christmas Eve, doesn’t feel all that Christmasy – if anything, it’s just that it’s all about birth (which, for religious types, Christmas is as well), and I guess we hear that some characters are having Christmas dinners, but we don’t see anything of the holiday itself. I think this works therefore, more as Christmas counter-programming than Christmas horror per se. But it is, in many ways, a very effective, visceral thriller, with shocking, horrific moments of jaw dropping, cringe inducing ugliness, and, for a while, oodles of tension and suspense. There’s a reason this was grouped among the films knows as “The New French Extremity.”

Months after the death of her husband in a car accident, Sarah is due to have labor induced on December 25th. Everyone around her seems happy about the upcoming birth – her doctor, her mother, her boss, but Sarah seems ambivalent at best. Depressed and alone, she’s facing down a future with a stranger who will forever remind her of who and what she’s lost. And then there’s a knock at the door…

From there, this becomes an intense home invasion nightmare as an unnamed woman works her way into Sarah’s home, relentlessly coming after her, hellbent on cutting her fetus out of her belly with a large pair of scissors, and willing to destroy anyone who potentially stands in her way. And it gets pretty rough – by the end, rivers of blood have been spilled. All of this happens against the backdrop of riots in the Paris suburbs – everyone is so scared of the “violence” enacted by people who are viewed as outsiders (there are strong xenophobic undercurrents), but it is in this quiet neighborhood that a real invasion and violation is taking place.

When it’s working at its best, Inside is breathless and exciting, with extreme moments of mutilation and pain that can really shock if you stay open to them. If you let yourself go on its ride, it can be a real rollercoaster.

But, it must be said (must it? I don’t know, but I’m gonna) that when it’s at its worst, characters make some of the most frustrating “horror character bad decisions” I’ve seen in a while. For example, at one point, a police officer is in the house, trying to help Sarah escape. His partner is dead, and there are plenty of other corpses lying around as well. He makes a cursory examination of the place and determines that the killer has left. Suddenly, the lights go out. Sarah starts screaming (rightfully so) that “she’s still here!” but he decides that rather than get her to safety post haste, he’s going to move her to a bedroom, lay her on a bed with a revolver and go downstairs to find the fuse box. Have I mentioned that he still hasn’t called in the crime scene to dispatch or that he has a guy he’s arrested handcuffed to him the whole time for some reason (handcuffs don’t work in police vehicles or something…)? Anyway, off he goes and then Sarah – who has been under attack, who has seen loved ones die, who has been stabbed and mutilated and terrorized by this crazy woman – who is clearly still in the house – puts the revolver away and lies down to go to sleep. I’m all for willing suspension of disbelief, but this movie is really pushing it to the limit.

So yeah – some aspects didn’t work for me – and tended to break the tension because I just couldn’t believe the choices being made (also – there is waaay too much CGI fetus-cam going on for my liking – probably any CGI fetus-cam at all is too much, and this movie has much more than that). But when I wasn’t being pulled out of it, which was generally when it was just the two women, the movie was, admittedly, kinda great. So overall, it was a bit of a frustrating watch, but I am glad to have seen it. I’ve long heard its praises sung and there is a lot there to value if you can overlook all the other stuff.

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And there we are. “Another year over and a new one just begun” Happy Christmas everybody! If you’ve been watching your way through the collected holiday horrors as I have, I hope you’ve found some good ones. I’ll say that I like it best when they really bring both elements – when they are full of Christmas and are still a full on horror movie. Some, like Inside, can be a satisfying watch if you want something that is nominally set on Christmas but will give you a totally different experience, but I really love when you get those warm holiday vibes, but they are accompanied by a discordant note of something unsettling, something uncanny or threatening – that, for me, is when a Christmas horror lives up to its full potential.

Stay warm and I’ll be back atcha in the new year.

Catching Up With Christmas Horror

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Tis the season and all that. Thanksgiving’s behind us (though I still haven’t seen Eli Roth’s new movie) and we are therefore past the firewall that stops us from getting into holiday horror too soon and just ruining our appetites. So with December underway, I thought I might glut myself on killers in Santa suits, murderous toys, cannibalistic elves, and awkward family meetings – you know – Christmas!

There have got to be more horror movies set at Christmas than any other holiday, including Halloween. Maybe it’s due to the perverse pleasure taken in souring something oversweet, or the endless parade of symbols, decorations, traditions, and songs this holiday offers up to be wickedly repurposed, or the idea that it happens at the darkest time of the year – the longest night – with just a bit of light to get us through, or possibly the fact (and I am far from the first to observe this) that it is inherently creepy to tell children that there is a huge old man in a red suit watching them all year long, judging their every action, and on the darkest night he will break into their house and… do stuff. Naughty or nice, that’s scary.

Anyway, I do enjoy a good Christmas horror movie and have written about a few in the past. A couple years back, I touched on a couple of great Santa Slashers as well as one of my absolute favorite horror movies ever, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), and last year I revisited, for the first time in far too long, Joe Dante’s devilishly fun and surprisingly scary Gremlins. But as mentioned above, there are so many more that I haven’t seen. So I think I’m going to do a run through as many as I can watch in the next week or so. There will probably be spoilers – enjoy!

Blood Beat (1983)

Wow. I’d heard that Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos’s one and only film was worth my time, but when I first tried watching it maybe half a year ago, I just couldn’t get past the non-professional acting, but I am so very glad that I gave it another chance. It’s not what many would call a “good” movie. But it is kind of amazing, and I think I love it.

To give a short, superficial description – Sarah accompanies her boyfriend and his sister to do Christmas at his home in rural Wisconsin with his reclusive, psychic, abstract painter mother and her deer hunting boyfriend. On first meeting, Sarah and the mother experience some mutually unpleasant mental connection, immediately taking against each other, and you know this is going to be an uncomfortable holiday. There’s an immediately unsettling, ominous atmosphere (accomplished via a combination of surprisingly capable cinematography, a blaring soundtrack of weird, warbling synthy twangs and overwhelmingly loud and constant classical music – the climax is set to Carmina Burana – as well as ceaseless wind and nature sounds, and periodic disorienting editing and shots that suddenly appear in negative). This eerie, uncanny vibe builds and builds until the one thing this movie is famous for finally appears – that’s right, a blue, glowing samurai ghost that starts hacking up friends, neighbors, and ultimately, the family itself – seemingly linked to Sarah writhing about on the bed orgasmically. Fortunately, it seems everyone in this family is also psychic – or at least has the ability to make their hands glow and zap samurais with laser blasts – like you do, and in the end, the brother and his sister (who spends an inordinate amount of time running around in the Wisconsin woods at Christmas time in a sleep shirt and leg warmers – give this girl some pants) walk off into the morning light, the threat having been vanquished, if certainly not understood, and Sarah apparently dead under the samurai armor – Merry Christmas everybody!

But that doesn’t do justice to the experience of watching this odd masterpiece, so let’s just boil it all down: a freaking samurai, lasers, Christmas, psychics, abstract painting, an oppressive soundtrack, negative shots, eerie nature photography, peculiar psycho-sexual content, early eighties visual effects that have aged poorly and probably looked bad in 1983, amateurish acting, strained dialogue, a really uncomfortable family visit, bad romantic relationships with pushy, petulant, shouty men, an all-out assault on the notions of logic and causality – maybe that begins to communicate the film slightly better.

Now all of this may sound like “so bad it’s good” territory – and I can see how one might view it as such. It is not, by any means, a “well-made film” and I think people could have a really good time laughing at its faults, non-sequiturs, and absurdities – for all that it is weird and confusing as a summer day is long, I was never bored. My jaw was often hanging open in shock, but I was never less than fully engaged. What’s more, I found it to be so much more than just a “great bad movie.”

Honestly, and I imagine this was largely by accident, I felt it was kind of a great movie in its own right. Watching it, I had such a strong sense of a kind of folk horror – the setting and the atmosphere and the mysterious events all worked for me – and on top of that, I read it as a sort of captivating “naïve art.” Clearly, most of the people involved were not professionals in their positions – many of the actors never performed in anything else before or after this project. The writer-director-composer-editor had written one other film (directed by his dad), but this was his only directorial effort (produced by his dad). The cinematographer, Vladimir Van Maule, was actually quite proficient, but still, through a miscommunication early in the project, he’d thought they were shooting the film for TV and so he filmed it all in 4:3 instead of a more cinematic widescreen, so let’s say there were issues. But all of this lack of experience somehow allowed something weirdly pure to slip through. I think they stumbled backwards and blind into ‘art.’

Sure, these may not have all been professional film workers, but there were strong (sometimes nonsensical, but strong) ideas, there was a real feeling that connected, and there was an odd talent or drive or spirit at the heart of it all that got its hooks into me. And this somehow worked on all levels. For example, when I’d first tried watching this, as mentioned above, I just couldn’t get past the non-professional acting, but on this viewing, it all just seemed so naturalistic and unpretentious. Sure – not every acting choice was the most interesting, but it was so simple, unadorned, and earnest – and it got to me.

On a filmmaking level, it takes some big swings, working with a stylistic freedom that “better” films wouldn’t allow themselves, and there is clearly an eye there. There are very attractive shots and evocative staging that lets the characters speak for themselves, just by inhabiting space, such as one set up in the living room – everyone has something going on and the framing allows it to breathe. Other sequences really sing, such as the first appearance of the samurai, who shows up to slaughter some neighbors as Sarah twists and turns on the bed, panting and moaning. Why is there this sexual connection? Who knows? Why is the husband in the neighbor couple such a jerk to his wife, and why does she put a tray with tea service on the squishiest, least stable waterbed I’ve ever seen – doesn’t she need to sleep there later – is she a fan of sleeping on wet, tea-stained sheets? Their relationship is strained and strange, but still actually believable – sometimes relationships are weird (and these little odd details give their marriage a surprising degree of verisimilitude). The linking of Sarah’s orgasms with the samurai’s violence is utterly bizarre, but it clicks in the moment, and as the editing feverishly jumps back and forth between her arched back and the middle aged husband next door fleeing in his saggy, once white briefs from this mysteriously exotic, eastern killer, it just feels right – strange and baffling, but right.

In the end, it all felt more like successful, if impenetrable, “art” than a ‘bad horror movie.’ But this wasn’t art to communicate meaning. I don’t think there is something to be interpreted in this piece and any discussion of what it all means, for me, is pointless. But it worked – it did  something. My mind was enjoyably cracked open by the weirdness, but not so much that I lost interest. Was I moved? Maybe a little. Did I think? Maybe just “why?” But I did clearly have some kind of art experience – let’s say I was transported. Where to? I have no idea, but for a little less than 90 minutes, I was in for the ride and I’m so happy that I took it. It was a worthwhile, totally non-cerebral aesthetic encounter.

Now, as I’m including this as a Christmas movie, just how Christmasy was it? Not a ton perhaps, but it does all revolve around something that can be such a common holiday experience – going with your partner to their family home and not feeling right there. His family has different traditions. You feel his mother is judging you. Your boyfriend ignores your discomfort because for him, all of this is normal, and he keeps trying to initiate sex even though you can feel his mother’s weird psychic presence in the room, watching, thinking the worst – deeming you a tramp, or possibly the reincarnated spirit of a vengeful samurai. And of course, it all ends with katanas, lasers, howling wind, and Carl Orff. You know, Christmas…

It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)

This delightfully titled Christmas-movie-cum-slasher has oodles of pedigree. It was written by Michael Kennedy, the screenwriter of the playful and moving Freaky (2020), and directed by Tyler MacIntyre, the director of the rather cynical, razor sharp Tragedy Girls (2017). It’s got a great cast, including Joel McHale (Assassination Nation), Justin Long (Barbarian), and Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps). And it’s got a clever, impish, high-concept premise – shuffling together the tropes of a Christmas movie, particularly of a Hallmark channel variety, with those of a masked-killer slasher. It’s a great collection of elements, and it all comes together to be a rather good time, if not particularly groundbreaking or life changing. That said, off the bat, I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but I did genuinely like watching this movie, even if I do have my criticisms.

I have written before on the emergence of a newish sub-genre/approach – that of the “meta-modern slasher.” Working with a high degree of genre-awareness, these contemporary ‘dead teenager movies’ tend to consciously build on tropes and forms much as “postmodern slashers” such as Scream have done, but with new degrees of both genre play and emotional sincerity. In all cases that I’ve seen, there has been a ‘big idea’: what if Groundhog Day were a slasher? Or Freaky Friday? Or The Purple Rose of Cairo? Or Back to the Future? Or, in this case, a made for TV movie riffing on It’s a Wonderful Life? Working within both the forms of the slasher flick and whatever the given cinematic inspiration was, there is a lot of room for both knowing comedy and brutal kills, and at their best, the two genres complement each other, each bringing out the best in its unlikely counterpart. But what really distinguishes these movies is not the cute idea of pairing two seemingly opposite types of films, but rather, their glowing warmth and good heart. These works tend to offer the thrills of a violent slasher, but the end effect is really never one of horror; rather, they are ultimately stories of reconciliation, of family, of loss and love.

In the case of It’s a Wonderful Knife, I can’t exactly say that both the slasher and the Christmas film are perfectly served by the pairing, or that they are both executed to perfection, but they are both clearly present. Most importantly though, even if there are narrative lapses, unearned character turns, or moments that just didn’t add up for me, I can’t deny this film’s big, loving heart. I’d be lying if I claimed not to have cried by the end of this movie that sees sharpened candy canes shoved through people’s heads, beheadings, impalements, electrocutions, and lots and lots of stabbing (though I admit I was disappointed that at no point did someone pick up the killer’s signature blade and say something like, “I wish he’d stop killing townspeople, but I gotta say, it really is a wonderful knife! (Look at the camera with raised eyebrows! Freeze frame! Roll credits!)

We start with the Hallmark movie – in the picturesque small town of Angel Falls, an unscrupulous real estate developer is making Winnie’s dad work on Christmas Eve as he tries to buy up the last piece of land standing in the way of his new giant shopping center/condos/fill-in-the-blank tower of greed. Winnie and her family are sad about this, but for years, it’s been the norm. Ok – so now we add the slasher: Winnie finds herself facing a masked white angel who has already murdered a couple of her friends, and she unmasks and kills him. Merry Christmas! One year later, everyone in the town has progressed from the dark events of last Christmas and is trying to just dive into the holidays and commit to being happy. Winnie seems to be the only person incapable of moving on (I mean, she is also the only one who had to kill someone last year).

Thus, so distraught in her trauma, so isolated by everyone else’s carefree gaiety, she makes a Christmas wish to have never been born (for me – I believed her misery, but the leap to “everyone would be better off without me” seemed more than a little abrupt – almost perfunctory – to hurry up and get us to the premise – in It’s a Wonderful Life, I’m sure George doesn’t decide to kill himself until well after the 2/3 mark, and in this case, Winnie does so before a third of the movie has passed – and this makes a difference). And suddenly, before any bells ring or angels get their wings, no one in Angel Falls knows who she is anymore, and the no-longer-killed-a-year-ago masked angel slasher is back (since she never dispatched him, he has apparently been killing someone every couple of weeks for the whole last year). What’s more, the town has fallen fully into the grasp of the evil developer – now the mayor, and everything has just gone utterly to hell – like Pottersville on crack – literally – now many of her friends (who no longer know who she is) are junkies – maybe this is all a reference to Community, the show where most first saw Joel McHale – this is the darkest timeline. In an uncharacteristic turn for a whodunit slasher, she knows the angel’s identity, but no one believes her of course, and she has to team up with Bernie (a social outcast with whom she shares some chemistry) to try to set everything right. Along the way, the two girls both learn to value their place in the world, each playing Clarence to the other, as they furthermore fall in love.

Of this recent wave of heartwarming, genre bending, comic slashers (such as The Final Girls, Freaky, Happy Death Day, or Totally Killer), sadly, I can’t call this my favorite, but I did very much enjoy it. It takes some unexpected turns here and there, though so much of it depends on us already knowing how a certain kind of story must progress; many of the characters have a spark, and I just enjoy spending time with them; and the Christmas movie of it all generally lands (as I mentioned, it did get me to cry by the end – though I’m an easy mark) – but if at any time it didn’t, I knew it was ok cause someone was going to get stabbed soon. Also, I did connect with the central romance – there wasn’t necessarily a lot of story to hang it on, but the two lead girls did spark, and it was affecting seeing them connect.

And there were problems as well. Many beats don’t track, some moments left me really scratching my head (glowing eyed hypnotism – huh?), and it often felt rushed. I think the story could have benefited from even an additional ten minutes. It clearly combines the slasher not with Capra’s classic film, but instead with a more superficial spin on it, as get churned out every year for TV or now streaming (I heard in an interview with the director that it was even filmed in a town used for a great deal of Hallmark Channel movies and that much of the crew had worked on such films previously). And yet, I find myself pre-disposed to like it – I want to like it – it is likeable (if clearly flawed) – and so I do like it. Of course, if all of its elements worked a bit better, it could be really special. As it is, it is merely a frolic – a light entertainment that passes a dark, cold December evening with a bit of frothy warmth – an imperfect, but highly watchable 87 minutes, full of character, tons of positive representation (a surprising percentage of named characters being gay and/or people of color and/or people with some physical difference – it’s a very open film in that way), a ticklish idea, and, again, a whole lot of stabbing.

Will I watch it every year? Maybe not – but if it’s on some Christmas time, I wouldn’t object to watching it again.

Black Christmas (2006)

So, I know this was a much beloved and critically praised film when it was released back in 2006… by which I mean, people HATED it. Made right in the middle of the 2000s remake boom, it was everything that the original was not. Whereas the earlier film had been a character driven exercise in building suspense and terror while showing very little, following a group of girls you love spending time with, whose deaths you fear for and mourn, with a killer who is never more than an eye through a crack or a deeply off-putting, horrifically unhinged voice or set of voices on the phone, who we never know or remotely understand (and is all the scarier for it), the remake was a gorefest with thinly drawn, disposable characters who were sometimes difficult to tell apart (even if a few were recognizable, known actresses), filled with drawn out exposition, detailing every moment of the killer’s development, eliciting some gasps of shock or revulsion, but ultimately too incoherent to actually be scary. It was… not loved.

And yet, over the years, I’ve seen it experience a kind of reappraisal. With the distance of time, people have been more willing to look past the comparison with its superior namesake and find value in what it is rather than just slamming it for what it isn’t. Now, I never watched it back in the day, and thought this Christmas horror run down was a good opportunity to finally check it out. So what did I think?

Well, the criticism is not wrong. But neither are the people who adore it.

First of all, I would love, if I had the power, to issue a rule that people must stop naming movies Black Christmas. Bob Clark’s 1974 film is simply too good and anyone naming their new film after it is just shooting themselves in the foot (kind of a horror version of naming your movie Citizen Kane). That was true with this flick, which was actually a remake, taking and repurposing many iconic images, names, and elements from the earlier film (sorority house, Christmas break, weird phone calls, crystal unicorns, snow globes, drunk girls being put in bed to sleep it off, a killer named Billy/Agnes, Andrea Martin, etc.), but it was also true for the 2019, much derided, “remake” in name only – which seemed like a completely different story that some executive had slapped the name Black Christmas onto in order to make a couple extra bucks from name recognition. For the record, I did actually rather enjoy the 2019 film – probably much more than this, but I believe the name really hurt it – and it was so unnecessary given how if it’s actually remaking anything, it’s not Clark’s film, but rather S02E05 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer  – “Reptile Boy.” Watch them both and tell me I’m wrong.

But about this movie, I can’t say that I loved it, and I can’t say that its structural issues are insubstantial (there were moments late in the film when I really couldn’t follow what was happening from one moment to the next and it feels like almost a third of its runtime is expository flashback), but amidst what might honestly be deemed a total mess, there is some enjoyable horror to be had.

A classy film this ain’t. Rather, its dubious strengths lie entirely in outré moments of utter, shameless excess, whether in terms of gore, gooey gross outs, or sexual taboo. An incestuous, murderous mother, crispy Christmas cookies made of human skin – disgustingly dipped in a glass of milk before being munched upon, and so, so, so many eye balls pulled out of their sockets and squished or eaten or hung on a Christmas tree as festive ornaments – this movie cannot be accused of gently beating around the bush, too scared to commit to its horrors – advisable or not, it is always willing to “go there.”

And that can be fun. Even if it is often weighed down by its failings as a film writ large, this Black Christmas is an absurd, gross, cringe inducing good time that succeeded a couple of times in making me squirm in my seat when I wasn’t scratching my chin, wondering what on earth was going on. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s a film that could have been “better.” It very much is what it is. For example, the amount of time spent in flashback, giving us a backstory for the killer feels just deadly – how could this interminable exposition possibly go on so long? And just when it seems to have finished, a new character starts it up again and we’re back to another ten minutes of flashbacks. But, honestly, some of the best, most awful stuff is in those overlong flashbacks, so I wouldn’t want to cut them. Babies, bathwater, and such… It’s like the song says, “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have” an abused child growing up to eat his mother and subsequently murder sorority girls for some reason…

So yeah – it’s not great – but there is fun to be had if you’re open to it. I’m not offended that it exists, and it does have some memorable moments of excess – which I always have a warm place in my heart for.

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So maybe that’s a good start on the season. These have been three very entertaining watches, even if none is exactly a classic for the ages. But having covered them, there are so many more seasonal films I still haven’t seen, so I think we’re going to stay on this train for at least one more post. Stay warm out there.

In Defense Of #1: Halloween Ends

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I’ve mentioned before my ambivalent relationship with horror fandom. On one level, it is great how the internet makes it possible to connect with others who share your interests, who have seen what you’ve seen (and frequently much, much more – providing a font of good recommendations), who can, by posting their own thoughts and responses, help you better articulate your own (something I’ve valued from other film writers that I hope my writing can, in turn, offer my readers). So many great blogs and podcasts have filled my watchlist with an endless selection of hidden gems. Via Facebook groups or Twitter, I’ve communicated with loads of knowledgeable aficionados of the genre – and that can be really enriching.

But sometimes it is just so negative out there.

As I understand it, the algorithms of social media always favor a biting critique over gentle equivocation. Fan spaces overflow with complaints that “(insert new release here) is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” (Seriously, the worst? These statements made about capably constructed films – even if they’re not good, they at least look like a real movie – always make me wonder if these writers have ever seen an actual bad movie). Even very thoughtful, respectful writers and podcasters can really hate something and go on at length about just that. And don’t get me wrong – I can enjoy a good rant, very negative reviews can be good fun, and a bit of snark never really hurt anybody, but for me it just gets to be a bit too much. While twenty something years ago, I could get enraged about how offensive it was to remake some classic horror work in an obvious, soulless cash-grab that either missed the point or even directly flew in the face of what had made the original so significant, now I find that the longer I inhabit fan spaces, the lower my tolerance has become for such vitriol.

And nothing inspires fans to vent their spleens more than a much anticipated, high profile release – such as an entry in a long running franchise, or anything new that’s getting a lot of buzz and critical praise, which therefore needs to be knocked down a peg (often works assigned the title of ‘elevated’ horror). And so, I’ve had it in mind for a while to start a new series (which I will hopefully add to with more regularity than some that came before it – Polish Horror Series, I promise to get back to you someday…) wherein I take some film reviled by fans that I actually enjoyed, at least on some level, and go into what I found in it to value. I can’t claim to love all of these, but I can’t discount them either.

So to kick this off, I thought I’d pick up a relatively recent film that came in for heavy fan hatred on release last year, but which I was surprised to find myself rather enjoying when I finally checked it out a few months back – David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends (2022). It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway – this discussion is not possible without near total spoilers, so be forewarned.

Halloween Ends (2022)

Poster for Halloween Ends
Is it just me, or does the poster look like it could be advertising a buddy-cop movie?

The third and final entry in this recent revisiting of the franchise, I think Halloween Ends drew venom for much the same reason that the original Halloween III did – a surprising lack of Shatner faced slasher, Michael Meyers. But whereas the 1982 film had set out (and failed) to anthologize the Halloween series, making each subsequent entry a new standalone story (Carpenter had reportedly never intended to start a Michael Meyers film series), “Ends” purports to bring both this contemporary trilogy, as well as the Halloween franchise as a whole, to a close – finding a satisfying conclusion for both the iconic masked killer and Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode. Given the way this was marketed as such, it is not terribly surprising that audiences turned against this film, which out of its 111 minute run time features less than 11 minutes of the fan favorite slasher. Now, to be fair, a great many horror films, including the 1978 original, barely show the killer or threat, but their presence is often felt – always there, looming, just out of sight, around the corner, watching, waiting, creating a sense of ever-present danger – and in this case, the film instead just tells a completely different story for most of those other 100 minutes. A bold choice, but apparently not one destined to win over many fans.

But I have to say, I really liked it – more than the 2018 film, and certainly more than 2021’s Halloween Kills, which I really did not love, but also more than most of the sequels. I mean, I’ve never really been a franchise kid, but I have watched most of the Halloween films (one day I’ll catch up with Rob Zombie’s efforts, which I still haven’t seen) and, while I love the original and might even watch it about once a year (and I am a big fan of Part III, which has happily experienced a popular reappraisal in recent years), I can’t say I’m really a big fan of the series, per se. Even when there’s a new addition to the lore, such as the Cult of Thorn in part 6, it all feels more than a bit samey to me. There is often a ominous weight of seriousness hanging over it all, but at the end of the day, we are back to the faceless killer, embodying evil, slashing his way through town. Each film has something to enjoy, but though I always end up watching a new one on release, I’m rarely that excited. Nor am I particularly disappointed. They’re fine.

And so, the fact that this tells a new story, that it is barely a Michael Meyers film at all, is a definite reason for greater interest on my part.

Most of the film circles around another troubled young man, Corey, the same age when the film begins that Michael was in ’78, who does not begin as a deadly child psychopath, but rather just has one really bad Halloween night, resulting in the accidental death of the kid he’s babysitting (in one of the best scenes of the movie – tense, playful, and shockingly awful). This unsurprisingly results in him becoming a pariah in Haddonfield, until the hatred directed at him metastasizes to the point that he snaps and actually become the monster he’s already believed to be.

Along the way, he strikes up a relationship with Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter, who’d lost her boyfriend, both of her parents, and most of her friends to Michael’s knife four years earlier when the killer resurfaced. She is just as burdened by the past as he is, though she’s doing a better job of functioning in public (and, as he points out, it is quite different to be viewed as a trauma survivor than a child murderer). Finding a kindred spirit in Corey, she is immediately drawn to him. Furthermore, this attraction doesn’t diminish as he tips over the edge and begins to copycat Michael’s killings, even donning the mask as he does so. Rather, the darker he goes, the more confident, defiant, and magnetic he becomes, and she is ready to blow town and go start a new life together somewhere else, far from the accursed place they’ve both called home. Those plans go up in smoke, however, when his killing spree gets out of hand (as if there’s such a thing as a killing spree that hasn’t), culminating in an attack on Allyson’s grandmother – not the sort of thing one expects to end well.

On paper, this reads as melodramatic, and I suppose it could have played that way for some, but it genuinely worked for me. I felt for Corey’s plight and enjoyed this slower, emotional exploration of a broken young person backing into a corner of violence and cruelty and power and freedom. I appreciated time given over to looking at how many characters, not only Laurie and Allyson, are trying to move on with their lives, even finding peace and new direction, but how some just can’t successfully take that step. I liked how sidelined Michael Meyers is in what some might call ‘his own’ film. While he is terrifying in the first movie, and still scary in the second, for me, there is a law of diminishing returns and after a certain point, I just stopped finding his brand of blank, unexpressive ‘evil’ all that interesting anymore.

I mean, what is ‘evil’ anyway? As a non-religious person, the notion of a character simply being ‘evil’ in this kind of essential way just falls a bit flat for me. Now, that has always been a core aspect of Michael, as officially diagnosed by Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis (a deeply enjoyable performance and character – but seriously, NOT a good child psychiatrist) – and that’s all well and good for a while (one, two, maybe even three or four films), but if you talk about it too much, let us just say it strains credulity (this is the 13th entry). That said, shifting focus to a study of one young person who experiences a terrible, accidental event, is then blamed for it, is treated as a killer, as a ‘bad person,’ is bullied and harassed and almost killed, before discovering the power and freedom that comes with actually choosing to be the monster, coming to feel how freeing, how empowering it is to rise up, to be willing to cause harm, to kill in cold blood – that is interesting. That is moving. That is exciting and troubling and scary and feels ever-relevant (how many dangerous young men are there out there, ready to snap?). And on top of that, I bought the central relationship – I believed the attraction, the way that as Corey becomes (unbeknownst to Allyson) a killer, he grows more charismatic – and she finds kinship and emotional release with him.

This movie is filled with unpleasant people who cannot forgive, and who assign blame unfairly and capriciously (seriously, why do so many people blame Laurie for Michael Meyers’s crimes when all she ever did was rave about how dangerous he was and try to kill him when given a chance – why does no one seem to remember Michael’s doctor from the 2018 film who worshiped him and arranged for his escape?), but it is also full of people who are trying to help each other (Corey’s boss at the scrapyard/stepdad? seemed like a really good guy – it’s a shame he didn’t make it), even if they don’t really know how, who are just trying to get through life, making mistakes, sometimes with terrible consequences, and who sometimes find their way to doing evil as they walk their troubled path. I think that is a much more engaging and fascinating kind of horror than simply another affectless masked killer.

So that is Halloween Ends. Is it my new favorite movie or, for that matter, a satisfying conclusion to this ‘trilogy’? No, of course not. But did I really enjoy it? Absolutely. I was engaged throughout, often in suspense, emotionally invested in the characters, and digging on the vibe. Of course, I can’t claim it’s perfect (for example, I’ve not gone into how Corey finds Michael living in a sewer like some kind of Pennywise the clown, infecting the town with his evil and is somehow recruited by him to go kill; I don’t feel like detailing just how much voiceover Laurie has, reading from her book about the horror of Michael’s radical EVIL; nor do I want to spend much time on the final confrontation between Laurie and Michael that feels almost from a different movie (probably the movie most people thought they were going to see) before she leads the town on a procession to the local junkyard so that they can all see her destroy his body in an industrial shredder and thus rest easy knowing that !!!EVIL!!! has finally been destroyed and that Halloween has really and truly ended), but I’m sure I’ll forget its more regrettable aspects and it’s the other elements that will remain. Truly – I watched this for the first time back in June and really only remembered loving the emotion and horror pinch of the Corey storyline, and I was quite surprised when I rewatched it last night and discovered just how much silly stuff I’d forgotten.

There sure is a lot of talk about evil…

And that does somewhat bring me back to why I wanted to do this “In Defense Of” series. It’s so easy to jump on a work’s faults, but life is full of faults. I just don’t have the power to detail every failure I see, to get worked up about a misjudged artistic choice (or an unfortunate economic one). I find it much more interesting to consider instead what did land, even in an imperfect project (and, by matters of degree, there is no other kind). Often that reassessment comes much later (for example, see how Halloween III has become a beloved cult classic), but one doesn’t really need to wait 20 years to decide that maybe this new flick isn’t actually “the worst movie ever,” and that there can be something of value to take away from it. That’s what I’ll try to do with this series…