Next up is another horror ‘anthology’ film and, sadly, not a particularly great one. 2019’s Holiday Hell once again tells a collection of ‘terrifying’ tales, each set during a different holiday but mixes things up by including Hanukkah and the ‘Winter Solstice’, which feels like a bit of a stretch. There’s a decent, if far-fetched framing device, with the Re-Animator himself Jeffrey Combs as ‘The Shopkeeper’, the creepy owner of ‘Never Tell’, the kind of ‘curiosity’ store that’s filled with shrunken heads and monkey paws and only seems to exist in scary movies. On Christmas Eve night he regales a mysterious visitor with different weird stories surrounding items he’s trying to sell her. The idea is that each object has a story behind it that’s “never been told”, begging the awkward question of how The Shopkeeper could possibly know them?
Anyway, it’s another film where each chapter varies wildly in quality, though even the best segment here could only begrudgingly be described as ‘okay’. A sinister ‘dollface’ mask leads us into a horribly inept Valentines slasher segment with some odious partying teens being terrorised by an unknown masked baddie. Some of the gore effects are impressive (bottle in the face, anyone?), but with a total lack of scares, writing so lazy and characters so awful and thinly sketched, it's hard to get through without rolling my eyes many, many times. It all feels terribly rushed, which works out well, as I’m really glad for it to be over.
The Hanukkah tale has the applause-worthy title of ‘The Hand that Rocks the Dreidel’, but that’s as good as it gets. This is a ‘killer doll’ story that is set up rather nicely with mum and dad gifting their child a seriously creepy Hebrew Rabbi doll right before they bugger off on holiday, leaving him alone with the world’s worst babysitter. She and her laughably O.T.T. pimp/gangsta boyfriend have designs on robbing the house but, in a refreshing turn of events, the terrifying doll carries a ‘protective Jewish curse’ or something and helps the kid defend the house. Criminally, the doll doesn’t really do much, other than look scary, as the babysitter somehow manages to kill her boyfriend herself by accident before she even sees the freaky figurine. What’s that all about? It feels like lots of build-up for little pay-off. It also all looks absurdly cheap, with the film expecting us to believe this family is loaded while their house is sparsely furnished with Ikea furniture that I have in my own home. Still, kudos for representing our Jewish brothers and sisters.
The festive chapter ‘Christmas Carnage’ is the best of the bunch and stars Joel Murray (brother of Bill) as Chris, a clichéd, sadsack midlife-crisis loser who’s been screwed over by life at every turn. Passed over for promotion again and again at the pharmaceutical firm where he works, Chris is forced to dress as Santa at the office party, where he finds his rival bonking his wife. Pushed to the edge, he downs a load of his company’s established-to-possibly-cause-suicidal-psychosis pills and goes on a jolly yuletide rampage.
Of all the tales, this one is actually quite fun, with Chris settling scores, all while wearing a Santa suit and chucking out terri-brill one-liners with giddy abandon – “I’m giving you the axe!”; “That’s not how you get ahead!” etc etc. It's not terribly original, but stands head and shoulders over the rest of these lacklustre chapters.
The final Solstice story is a deathly dull Wicker Man-style tale of a young woman who rents a room in a shady old country village, only to discover she’s wandered into some witchy cult human sacrifice situation. It feels like a story that’s been told a million times and from the moment the girl mentions she has “no family to speak of”, you know exactly where all this is going. Most criminally, it’s boring and offensively un-scary.
All the Holiday Hell stories feel lazy and uninspired, including the wraparound tale that sees Combs’ Shopkeeper get his just desserts for some poorly explained past transgression. The production design and lighting throughout is drab and amateurish but worst of all it’s just not frightening. I’ve had scarier Boxing Day poops.
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