Posts Tagged ‘Christmas horror’
Wednesday, December 24th, 2025
THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BARN is a 2023 horror comedy that I watched because it was one of the very few Christmas movies on Shudder that I hadn’t seen yet. It’s pretty middle-of-the-road, but definitely watchable, kept me entertained, gave me a few laughs.
Martin Starr (XTRO 3: WATCH THE SKIES) stars as Bill Nordheim, an enthusiastic American dork who moves his family to Gudbrandsdalen, Norway when he inherits a house from his uncle. One thing he doesn’t mention to the family is that the uncle died mysteriously while trying to burn down the barn. And one thing he doesn’t know himself is that the uncle was trying to burn down the barn to exterminate a dangerous barn elf (Kiran Shah, LEGEND). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: '80s nostalgia, Amrita Acharia, Christmas horror, elves, Henriette Steenstrup, Jaume Balaguero, Kiran Shah, Magnus Martens, Martin Starr, Maru Valdivielso, Norway, Spanish horror, Townes Bunner, Zoe Winther-Hansen
Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, December 17th, 2025
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (2025) is not a great remake, but it’s a fun one, a solid one, mostly because it’s a playful one. The first couple scenes seem like a pretty straight forward update of the 1984 original – there are some funny additions, but it’s young Billy Chapman (Logan Sawyer, “Kid #1,” FOLLOWING YONDER STAR) visiting his grandpa (Darren Felbel, ALWAYS AND FOREVER CHRISTMAS, OUR CHRISTMAS LOVE SONG) and getting freaked out by an outburst about Santa punishing the naughty, then witnessing the murder of his parents by a man in a Santa costume. So I figured it was gonna mostly follow the original, but that’s not the case at all. Writer/director Mike P. Nelson (WRONG TURN [2021], Angry Orchard and the Jason Un1v3rse present SWEET REVENGE) understands that not much is sacred about SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. You mostly just gotta have a Killer Santa. So Nelson plays around with our assumptions of what’s going on, and takes us for a fun ride.
First, a time jump to adult Billy (Rohan Campbell, a.k.a. Corey Cunningham from HALLOWEEN ENDS!) in a hotel having a bad time. You know, it’s that type of time jump where you start the movie with the traumatic past event and then you cut to the present with the person waking up from a nightmare. It tells us the first part was exactly what really happened but also the dream he just had, and even though we have had dreams before and know for sure that’s not how they work we still accept it because movies are magic and besides, it’s Christmas. Have a heart. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas horror, David Tomlinson, Mike P. Nelson, remakes, Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, slashers
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, November 5th, 2025
The last time I saw Guillermo del Toro’s debut CRONOS (1992) must’ve been more than thirty years ago. I know I was aware of it before he came out with MIMIC, but I can’t remember if I rented it before or after. So it would’ve been the late ‘90s or earlier. (Only ‘90s kids know CRONOS.)
It’s funny that there’s a movie I like about getting old and it has now gotten old along with me. Del Toro was still in his twenties, making a movie about old men trying to stop aging. I’m not grandpa-aged yet but I’m gonna say he guessed pretty good. At 50 I relate a little bit to this guy getting fucked up about age.
Of course one of the things that’s changed since 1992 is that del Toro has become an institution, a name brand, a celebrity, a best picture, director and animated feature winner. Back then was an obscure makeup artist and director of short films and television, making an impressive feature debut, but only released in 28 theaters in the U.S. When I think about it I could easily picture del Toro having some super low budget calling card movie, like an EL MARIACHI, an ERASERHEAD or an EVIL DEAD. Wouldn’t have to necessarilly start with ‘E,” but it would show the seeds of what he’d become while having its own crude beauty. No, this is more like BLOOD SIMPLE for the Coen Brothers – he seems almost fully formed. He’d quickly get more extravagant with the effects and the sets, but this doesn’t seem DIY in the slightest. It has scope to it, it has style, it has most of his obsessions. A dark-fairy-tale-meets-monster-movie tone, a mystical antique, a weird insect, an innocent little girl, a part for Ron Perlman. No Spanish Civil War yet, but the backstory does invoke the Inquisition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: alchemy, Christmas horror, Claudio Brook, debut features, Federico Luppi, Guillermo Del Toro, Jorge Martinez de Hoyos, Margarita Isabel, New Year's Eve, Ron Perlman, vampires
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
102 years after F.W. Murnau’s illegal copyright violation classic, here’s writer/director Robert Eggers following up THE WITCH, THE LIGHTHOUSE and THE NORTHMAN with THE NOSFERATU.
Nosferatu? Yesferatu. Absolutelyferatu.
In many ways NOSFERATU is pure Eggers: the meticulous attention to old timey visual, linguistic, and folkloric detail; the dreary natural lighting like you were sent hurtling to the past and forced to deal with a lack of electricity; the emphasis on mood, atmosphere and performance over modern horror tropes. The biggest way it’s different comes from being an adaptation (of an adaptation): while he maintains his trademark of presenting deeply researched superstitions of the past as reality, he has to do it with the more conventional horror set up that only the protagonists believe in the supernatural, and the others around them don’t buy it until it’s too late. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgard, Bram Stoker, Christmas horror, Dracula, Emma Corrin, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Ralph Ineson, Robert Eggers, Simon McBurney, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 27 Comments »
Monday, December 23rd, 2024
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.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Maio Mackay, Alison Star Locke, Anna Gunn, Annalise Basso, Australian cinema, Chrissy Metz, Christmas horror, Connor Paolo, Damien LeVeck, Janeane Garofalo, Jeremy Moineau, killer Santa, Linus Roache, Scout Taylor-Compton, Shannon Wells, trans, Vera Drew
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 16th, 2024
When I was slasher searching on Tubi in October I was surprised how many wrestling-themed horror movies I was coming across. And now I went looking for Christmas horror on Shudder and the first one I watched turned out to have a pro wrestler character in it. I guess the whole world is wrestling now anyway. We can’t escape it. At least it’s fun in movies.
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT is a Canadian movie from 2023, and once I started watching it I understood why its plot description (“A lone man with the Christmas Spirit trapped in his head must kidnap a teenage girl on order to save Christmas”) was so vague. Its strength is that it’s odd and doesn’t really follow any of the usual formulas. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Nunez, Bennet De Brabandere, Brad Austin, Chris Handfield, Christian Potenza, Christmas, Christmas horror, Enzo Campa, Jacklyn Francis, Jordan Kronis, Matia Jackett, Nicolas Grimes, Samantha Espie, Tavaree Daniel-Simms, Zion Forrest Lee
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 6 Comments »
Thursday, December 21st, 2023
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
For my tastes this can be rough going. There’s a whole cottage industry of boring, off-brand Krampus movies and shit, but that’s not even the biggest threat. Their library is also a bottomless well of no budget, non-professional movies of the current digital video era, and so far in my experience not many of those have the same appeal as the regional horror movies shot on film in the ‘80s with hopes of a drive-in or VHS release.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annette Wozniak, Beatrice Fletcher, Becca Hirani, Brent Baird, Christmas, Christmas horror, Julie Stevens, May Kelly, Mike McMurran, Patrick Bergin, Stephen Staley, Stream Warriors
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, December 19th, 2023
It’s here – that special time of year when I drink eggnog, watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, and try to find some new Christmas horror or crime movies that hit the spot. This year I watched one that’s a distant cousin of the killer doll movie.
In fact, the kind of doll that’s a Christmas present. POOKA! (2018) fulfills the important holiday horror movie duty of having lots of seasonal content. It centers around this Christmas season fad toy. Multiple scenes take place at a Christmas tree lot. The protagonist practices a monologue from A Christmas Carol for an acting audition, and the story includes a supernaturally-looking-back-at-your-life aspect vaguely similar to that or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. There’s a (weirdly birthday-like) Christmas party. And lots of red and green lights. So it does the trick. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alejandro Brugues, Blumhouse, Christmas horror, Dale Dickey, Felicia Day, Gerald Olson, Into the Dark, Jon Daly, Jonah Ray, Jonny Berryman, Latarsha Rose, Lyndia Greenwood, Malcolm Barrett, Motoki Maxted, Nacho Vigalondo, Nyasha Hatendi, Rachel Bloom, Ryan Copple, Wil Wheaton
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 4 Comments »
Friday, December 23rd, 2022
I don’t usually post on Fridays, but here is my second one today, because I got two last stocking stuffers for you before the holiday weekend. Here are reviews of two Christmas related shorts, one horror, one crime (sorta). Pretty obscure ones, but both worth checking out.
First up is THE PRESENT, which is a 2005 episode of a Japanese anthology show called Kazuo Umezz’s Horror Theater (released on DVD as part of Horror Theater 3). The titular Kazuo Umezu (the spelling varies) is a famous author of horror manga, as you can guess by the art laid over the introduction to the show, so this is an adaptation of one of his stories. He’s been around long enough that the 1968 movie THE SNAKE GIRL AND THE SILVER-HAIRED WITCH is based on his comics too.
THE PRESENT filters the classic American form of the killer Santa movie through a more Japanese (and specifically manga) style of fucked-upness. It’s about a little girl named Yuko (Kiyo Ôshiro) who wakes up on Christmas Eve, terrified by a nightmare about Santa. She has a Christmas tree in her room and a stocking on her bedpost – I’m not sure if that’s how they do it in Japan, or if it’s weird. But her parents comfort her and tell her to go back to sleep and she’ll get presents because she’s a good girl (though “if you do bad things he’ll come and get you.”) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas crime, Christmas horror, Francis Ford Coppola, killer Santa, manga, William S. Burroughs, Yudai Yamaguchi
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Crime, Horror | 12 Comments »
Friday, December 23rd, 2022
TOYS OF TERROR is a 2020 Christmas horror movie that’s exactly what it sounds like – a movie about toys coming to life and doing evil toy shit. It seems to have premiered on SyFy, and it’s on DVD and VOD. The director is someone named Nicholas Verso (BOYS IN THE TREES) and it’s written and executive produced by Dana Gould, the comedian, Simpsons writer and podcaster. I had no idea when I rented it that anyone notable was involved, and I respect that Gould seems to have just wanted to make a straightforward, non-parody Full Moon type movie. But it comes from the dystopically named “Blue Ribbon Content” division of Warner Bros. Television, responsible for some DC Comics web animation plus the DTV movies DAPHNE & VELMA and THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE, and has better craft and production value than many of the actual Full Moon movies, especially the later ones.
It’s the story of a family coming to stay at a former children’s home that they plan to refurbish into a mansion and flip. (Same set up as The Haunting of Hill House.) It’s implied to be somewhere in Washington state, but it’s filmed in Canada – as usual, and as indicated by a cast full of actors you know are Canadian because of how many Hallmark Christmas movies they’re in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas horror, Dana Gould, Dayo Ade, killer dolls, Kyana Teresa, Nicholas Verso, stop motion animation, Verity Marks
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 2 Comments »
