Like all modern horror movies, CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – a 2024 indie that came to Shudder on the 15th – is about a true crime podcaster who experienced trauma. But it does not feel like it’s trying to be “about trauma,” and the true crime aspect works because the protagonist, Lola Darling (Jeremy Moineau) is treated as a straight up detective character like Nancy Drew, Jessica Fletcher or somebody there’d be a BBC mystery series about. She’s very self-possessed, observant and knowledgeable, has an interest in the morbid, sneaks around crime scenes with a flash light, brings her own latex gloves.

She’s nervous about returning to the small town she left when she was 16. Yes, it’s the site of the aforementioned trauma (discovering the skeletal remains of someone murdered by a killer called “The Toymaker”), but also she hasn’t been back since she transitioned into a woman. I like that this overlaps a horror trope with a common coming out experience, but again, other than many of the characters/actors being trans I don’t think this is primarily “about” trans issues, but maybe it’s just over my head like I SAW THE TV GLOW was. The credits do label it as “A Transgender Holiday Film by Alice Maio Mackay.”

Soon after Lola’s return somebody starts killing people around her and leaving cryptic letters and clues in the style of The Toymaker. We (sort of) see the attacks, and it’s somebody in a creepily aged Santa mask. There’s talk about whether this is a ghost, a copycat, maybe a crazed podcast listener. Don’t worry, Lola is on the case.

This is an Australian movie, set in the suburbs, very different from the cinematic Australia we usually see over here. They make a big deal about it being a tiny backwards town, but also they have a pretty popular gay bar – yeah, Lola is surprised too. It’s really more of a place for her to catch up with old friends and make new ones than advance the plot, but I think that’s kind of nice.

It’s really a cliche now to rely heavily on gels and color correction to light everything in bright colors. Maybe it’s the JOHN WICK/ATOMIC BLONDE influence, but sometimes I wonder if we have a generation of directors who got really excited about the lighting of SUSPIRIA when they were starting out. Whatever the source, it really comes up alot in modern Christmas horror movies, because it’s so natural when you have Christmas lights around. But I’m not complaining, I think it’s a nice look that gets some benefit out of the digital format they’re using here. I mean I’d rather this be the go-to than the desaturated-so-it’s-practically-black-and-white we had going for so long.

The reason I paid attention to CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS is that it’s edited by Vera Drew, director/star of THE PEOPLE’S JOKER and veteran editor of Adult Swim/Tim Heidecker related works. It’s not saying much that this is closer to a conventional movie than THE PEOPLE’S JOKER, and a little more film-like in its visuals. But there are flashes of that Vera Drew eclecticism with a bit of animation, split-screens and a few gimmicky dissolves and transitions like this one where a pile of intestines and eyeballs in one scene become the sky in the subsequent funeral scene:

There are also many uses of abstracted images, and even some quick cuts that almost count as Avid Farts, but I suspect they’re inspired by non-narrative experimental film more than early 2000s DTV action movies shot in Bulgaria. I don’t mind them that much stylistically, especially when used for mystery-solving flashbacks, but when they show a bunch of gibberish instead of the killer Santa attacking I do think it keeps the scene from being effective as horror.

There are about three instances of pretty extravagant gore, but I think this is much more interested in mimicking detective novels and shows than even a whodunit slasher like SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. There are too many backstories and characters for me to keep all in my head, but Lola seems to know what she’s talking about.

I didn’t love this one, it didn’t ultimately satisfy me as a slasher or a mystery, but I appreciate its unusual heroine and combination of modern digital style and unpretentious horror. Not great, but interesting. Director Mackay actually has four previous horror (but not holiday) movies under her belt: SO VAM (2021), BAD GIRL BOOGEY (2022), T BLOCKERS (2023) and SATRANIC PANIC (2023), three of which also just came to Shudder.

A CREATURE WAS STIRRING also came to Shudder this month. It’s a bigger budget movie that pushes the bright colors even harder than CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS. Directed by Damien LeVeck (THE CLEANSING HOUR) and written by Shannon Wells, it’s a strange story about some people snowed in at Christmas who may or may not be in danger from a porcupine monster.

Faith (Chrissy Metz, This Is Us) is a nurse and former drug addict who is maybe overprotective of her teenage daughter Charm (Annalise Basso, OCULUS, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL). Like the daughter in STING, Charm is a somewhat sullen artist working on a graphic novel. She snaps at her mom for taking her temperature all the time, which we know is related to the belief that she’ll turn into a monster if it gets too high. When she’s close to the limit Charm puts on protective boxing gear and locks herself in her reinforced cell-like bedroom.

Then Faith catches a young couple, Kory (Connor Paolo, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY) and Liz (Scout Taylor-Compton, Laurie Strode from Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II), coming into her house wearing ski masks. She attacks them with a spiked bat but they swear they’re just seeking shelter from the snow storm, which has buried the house.

This is an odd one. A few times it cuts to narrated montages of Faith researching for a cure like she’s Dr. Peyton Westlake or some shit, complete with A QUIET PLACE style conveniently-explanatory bulletin boards. This, plus the constant primary colors had me thinking “Oh okay, they’re going for an EC Comics, cartoonish kind of feel here.” But if so it never quite clicks because it clashes with what I consider the best thing about the movie – the very serious and natural performance by Metz as the troubled mother. It’s honestly kind of pretentious in the way it makes Liz a preachy Christian (but with tattoos and dreadlocks) who debates with Faith about, uh, faith vs. science. Faith is on the science side.

But I suppose there are a few jokes. When she thinks they’re burglars Faith wacks Kory with a bat full of nails and screws. Trying to help him remove it she uses a drill on the Phillips head end of one of the screws but accidentally goes the wrong way and screws it further into his leg. I got a good laugh from that one.

There’s at least one scene that I was taking as a dream sequence but then it seemed to be telling me it was reality. That’s the part where Kory comes into Faith’s bedroom in a Green Lantern Halloween costume and seduces her as a distraction. (There’s a whole ongoing discussion of Green Lantern comics leading up to this.)

The Christmasy-ness is strong, with seasonal music, tons of lights and wreaths and things, and a stand out sequence of Liz crawling through a snow tunnel lit by a light-up candy cane toy. I think it’s at its best when it’s a straight up monster movie, and my favorite part is definitely when (FAVORITE PART SPOILER) a character is having a touching death bed moment but something drips on their head and they look up and it’s drool from the porcupine monster on the ceiling and it does a flip and spike-splats them. Also there’s a really cool practical transformation sequence and monster design with a human-ish face on top of its porcupine head. That detail kinda reminded me of the bug man in MIMIC.

But you ask, okay, Christmas monster movie, that sounds fun – but why a porcupine? Isn’t that kind of random? Well yes, it doesn’t really fit the seasonal theme, I really don’t know why they’d choose it unless it’s supposed to be— yeah, sure enough when the movie seems like it’s over there’s a NON-SPECIFIC BIG ASS ENDING SPOILER very clunky USUAL SUSPECTS type reveal of what’s really going on that for me was a total airball. It explains some of the things you might’ve wondered about, but makes the whole story way more stupid than you realized at the time, and I’m sorry to say that the porcupine quills represent Faith’s past with syringes. How’s that for a lump of coal. A CREATURE WAS STIRRING was a failure for me, but I wasn’t sure of that until the very end, so I got a few tidings of comfort and/or joy out of it before then. It’s still the closest I’ve coming to watching a Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

I think THE APOLOGY (2022) is the most successful of the trio here, but it’s also easily the grimmest, so it’s the hardest to recommend at this time of year. There’s relatively little violence or gore, but very upsetting real life type stuff is discussed in a way that can only possibly bum you out. Merry Christmas to all and to all viewer discretion is advised.

The credits unroll over a long, very slow drone shot of a forest hit by a snow storm. The sky is grey and the wind is whistling, so it’s spooky, not pretty. It ends on the isolated cabin where the whole movie will take place, almost like a play, but now we’ve established the atmosphere and the fact that we’re surrounded by nothing but snow and trees and gloom in all directions.

Darlene (Anna Gunn, RED STATE, SULLY) is up late on Christmas Eve preparing food for her first family get together in 20 years. She’s kinda freaking out but her friend Gretchen (Janeane Garofalo, TITAN A.E.) is there to give her pep talks. The snow is coming down hard, the lights are flickering, and Gretchen gets bundled up for the drive home. I laughed at the reveal that she only has to drive the equivalent of half a block to the next cabin.

After Gretchen leaves Darlene goes upstairs and pours herself a drink – not great, since she’s been sober for years. But not hard to understand, since this is the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of her 16 year old daughter Sally (Mary Leeholland). She hasn’t given up on finding her, or at least finding out what happened.

Then there’s a knock at the door. What the fuck. It’s Jack (Linus Roache, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, FIND ME GUILTY), her sister’s ex-husband. He wasn’t expected to come to the dinner at all, let alone to get his car stuck on the road and show up at Darlene’s late at night. Darlene seems to like him but it’s uncomfortable because 1) she needs to make sure her sister is okay with him being there and 2) we come to find that Jack once had a fling with her and is trying to make it happen again.

Also I already said this is a horror movie, so take a guess whether we should trust this guy or not. What unfolds is dialogue-based suspense plus the physical threat of a man and a woman alone in a house together with no way to leave. We’ve established that Gretchen is the only person nearby, so we wrestle between hoping she notices something and comes to help, or that she won’t notice anything because it will put her in danger too. It’s well executed, with Gunn and Roache mostly doing a two-person play, and since I haven’t seen Garofalo in many things for a long time it’s actually very sweet to see her doing the middle aged version of the acerbic best friend role that she had some success with when she was in her twenties.

You can probly guess this based on the information I’ve given but I will mark this a BIG ASS SPOILER: part of the real reason Jack has come is to confess that he killed her daughter. And there’s something extremely unsettling, but I think believable, about how he talks to her about it. Have you ever seen videos of serial killers where the interrogator gets them feeling like they’ve become buddies? They’re relieved to be talking about it and get too comfortable. Jack’s thing is that he’s delusionally optimistic that maybe if he couches it in enough apologies and excuses that she won’t be as mad. It feels authentic and therefore way more gross than if he was just acting evil.

THE APOLOGY is the feature debut of writer/director Alison Star Locke, and she doesn’t have a followup yet. But if I ever see “from the director of THE APOLOGY” on something it’ll get me interested.

P.S. I also tried to watch I TRAPPED THE DEVIL (on Shudder) and GOOD TIDINGS (on Tubi), but didn’t finish. The former was kind of an intriguing idea but I just wasn’t buying the characters and performances or enjoying their company enough to sit out any more of the slow burn. The latter was more interesting, with an effectively grimy opening and seasonally appropriate theme of homeless people living in an abandoned courthouse building (?) having to stand up to evil. I actually found the three killers, who wear Santa masks, don’t talk and only giggle (one of them kind of like Muttley from Wacky Racers), to be very creepy. But after a while the repetitive torment and very fake looking rubber heads just got tedious to me. Maybe if I was in a different mood.