Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the holiday spirit, the cozy, crackling fire is back. ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT is a sequel to the brilliant 2022 Christmas surprise ADULT SWIM YULE LOG. If you’ve never heard of that, it was a yule log video that aired without explanation at midnight on Adult Swim, now viewable on [HBO] Max or on a special edition blu-ray from Dekanalog. As you watch the fire in the fireplace you start to hear conversations in the cozy cabin where it takes place, and someone comes to the door and there’s a murder. It becomes a found footage horror movie slowly zooming out to show more of the cabin and eventually changing format as the story turns increasingly absurd and surreal.

And now, in secret as far as I know, writer/director Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks, the Cheddar Goblin commercial in MANDY) has made a continuation with a totally different, but still very impressive, Christmas/horror/comedy conceit. It centers on part 1 character Zoe (Andrea Laing, Step Up: High Water), revealed to have survived the massacre at the cabin (though her fiance did not). She wakes up in a hospital, haunted by hallucinations of the ultimate villain of the first film – the cursed yule log that flies around bashing people to death. Her failure to adjust to the trauma ends up costing her her job, so her fun gay friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson, “Ticket Booth Operator,” THE COLOR PURPLE [2023]) convinces her they should go to Cancun to get away from it all. But their car breaks down at the exit to a picturesque little town called Mistletoe, in time for “the festival.” You know – the annual yule log festival.

So here’s the strange and incredibly up my alley concept: it’s alternately a horror movie and a dead-on parody of the Hallmark Channel’s famous holiday rom-coms, and it plays with the fact that some of their tropes overlap slightly. Zoe says it’s like a horror movie to break down and get stranded in a small town, Jakester says no, it’s like a Hallmark movie, there’s a hunky mechanic to fall in love with and everything. And you start to see common story elements for both forms, like mourning a recent death or things going down at a small town’s annual festival.

There’s a really great visual gimmick that when she gets to Mistletoe the lighting turns bright and the aspect ratio fills the screen. When things get horror-y again, it slides into letterbox and the color grading turns dark. At one point she notices this, and starts stepping forward and backward, causing it to switch back and forth. Another time she’s on a date and there’s a split screen where she’s in the horror movie looking across the table to a guy who’s not.

The music by Jonathan Snipes of the experimental hip hop group clipping (A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX) also switches back and forth, and his version of the Hallmark whimsical music is so perfect I assumed they just hired somebody who really worked on those movies.

Netflix did a parody of Christmas rom-coms called A CLÜSTERFÜNKE CHRISTMAS that was kind of funny, but this is a way more authentic re-creation of the Hallmark style and tropes, which to me also makes it much funnier, even with fewer jokes. I like how much of it is played straight, though there are a few NAKED GUN type jokes like a reoccurring gag about handsome men of various occupations repeatedly knocking Zoe over on the sidewalk and charmingly helping her up. This is how we meet the bad guy suitor, Beauregard (Jesse Malinowski, “Trailer Park Redneck,” BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE), an influencer who’s rich and famous from livestreaming his life on his channel “BeauRevolution.” But she keeps getting knocked over by construction workers and firemen and stuff until Birt (Michael Shenefelt, POSTAL) carries her into “our humble little Christmas ornament store” and explains that “Our town is known for its clumsy hunks.”

It’s filmed in Georgia, not Canada, but it has the exact right clean, generic small town look. Bland graphic design on all signage, cute little shops selling cute little things without any personality. I’ve watched a ton of the actual Hallmark pictures, and this movie has the formula down. Birt has this treasured family business that doesn’t seem feasible even before we learn that “A big corporate Christmas ornament store just opened up downtown.” He runs the shop with his mom, who says to call her Nana (Sharon Blackwood, “Motel Clerk,” MAGIC MIKE XXL), and his son Jaxon (Asher Alexander), whose mom is in Heaven.

After knocking over a rack of irreplaceable ornaments, Zoe stays and learns how to make new ones, having obvious romantic tension with Birt, but hoping to leave town ASAP. She accepts a date with Beauregard to get his helicopter ticket out of town. He’s a much douchier influencer parody than you’d get on Hallmark, wearing fur coats, talking about being a “disruptor,” in fact owning a restaurant called DISrUPTIONS, and as the owner of the aforementioned corporate ornament store Morenaments, he brags that “I have talking ornaments, 3D printed ornaments, ornaments with A.I.” He also turns out to be behind the genre’s required real estate asshole Dawn (Susan Savoie, THE ACCOUNTANT) trying to get Birt to sell the store.

I got a big laugh from Birt’s deeply personal unfulfilled dream of re-creating his late wife’s “shrimp fudge recipe” inspired by shrimp mole they had on their honeymoon. Another gag that never got old for me is that Zoe almost always carries the ax with her just in case, so there are all kinds of shots like this:

Shenefelt makes a completely credible Hallmark leading man, and Laing really impressed me, shifting between tormented horror heroine and all this smiling and being charmed. If you’ve ever wanted to see all the Hallmark ingredients (the skeptical “woman from the big city,” the supportive friend talking to her over Facetime, the interrupted kiss, the closing of the business followed by miraculous re-opening, leaving town but returning unexpectedly for love) but with some bizarre tangents, a bunch of death and some projectile vomiting, then merry Christmas to you. In between scenes like this there’s also a horror movie happening, with the flying yule log escaping from an evidence locker, blowing up the police station, stowing away on a family trip to try to chase Zoe to Mistletoe. There are violent flying log murders with some goofy digital gore and at least one really spectacular practical effects scene of the log ripping out of a head. Reminded me of THE HIDDEN or something like that.

ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT proves that franchise horror will never die. Art the Clown may be the new Freddy, but the log is the new Michael Myers. Or something. If I had to choose my favorite chapter of the ADULT SWIM YULE LOG saga I’d go with the first one, because I like that as funny as it is I also take some of it seriously as a horror movie. This is more straight up parody/conceptual joke. But I love that it’s something entirely different. Bring on ADULT SWIM YULE LOG III: SEASON OF THE SWITCH.

<–This is kind of a cheat because there was no IMDb page for it all weekend. I had to pause the credits and look up all the names separately. But I noticed one exists this morning and submitted my review, so now I’m first.