I mean it. There have been like four films released in the past year, and I've just been blithely ignoring them like small chickens, begging to be scooped into my mouth as I bellow "YEAH ITHZ OKAY I GUETHS." I have a deep love for anthology horror, since it allows a person to experience the central core horror without all that pesky trappings or characterization. There's the setup for about three minutes, then it's monster monster time yee-haw. So, what happened? The embarrassing answer is that I've had less time for horror movies since I've been experiencing social interactions, the thing that probably kills serious horror discussion, since it is a damn difficult balancing act to have deep thoughts about slasher weaponry in a psychosexual connotion while looking someone in the eye and telling you how much you love them. But I'm trying my best here, guys!
At any rate while browsing through a completely legitimate film site for something for my girlfriend and I to watch, I saw Holidays, which billed itself as a collection of short horror films, each one related to a various holiday.* That's just corny enough to work, I said, trying to ignore that one of the directors was fucking Kevin Smith. After all, the guys that did Starry Eyes, the film that should have been considered the best horror of 2014 instead of the fucking Babadook, had a story in it! It can't be that bad, right?
And the truth is that it's not all bad, but holy shit the chaff to wheat ratio for this anthology is fucking grim.
The primary issue with the film is that there are a whole eight stories packed into a 105-minute running length. Most of the stories feel truncated and slight as a result, which is more frustrating when the few good'uns ended pre-maturely, making me rage at the foolish producers for allowing the fool films to remain. I kid, of course, as I'm mature enough to understand that balancing all these different directors and concepts into a cohesive settlement that made everyone happy is a feat unto itself, but still. Eurgh.
So about the Starry Eyes guys, they get first dibs with Valentine's Day, which is basically a revenge murder story where a shy swimmer pines for her coach while being bullied by another girl. Also the coach has to get a heart surgery and you see where this is going right. The realistic eye towards social dynamics and swag camera shots from Starry Eyes are there, but the level of setup required for a story like this with the allotted running time means the ultimate experience is like being shoved along very quickly by your parents through an interesting museum exhibit.
The second film, St. Patrick's Day, is similarly conflicting. On one hand, the plotline, involving an Irish schoolteacher, her sinister charge, pagan rituals, and one aspect of St. Patrick's acts, is actually a fairly novel concept for how to make a horror short about this holiday (I expected something about fucking leprechauns or a monster with green blood ooooh fuck off). On the other hand, the girlfriend and I agreed it was a fucking mess, with neither the horror or comedy elements coming off right, leaving a tepid, confusing mess with special effects that sabotaged any real creepiness.
Easter comes next, and it's basically a clever bit of creature work that no doubt spawned from someone snickering about the dictomy of the holiday existing around both Jesus and a magical rabbit. It's creepy I guess, but really I barely remember it because it was too close to the orbit of the worst and best entries of the film.
The worst easily belongs to Mother's Day, which was a lazy mess in every sense of the word. The plot barely relates to the actual holiday, being about some woman who gets pregnant super easily, who for some reason takes the advice of her doctor to visit a new-age fertility clinic in the desert that are (get ready) not quite on the up and up. The unending barrage of pointless scenes filmed in "wow look at me" camera angles couldn't distract me from the fact that this plot has been done multiple times already, most notably with V/H/S2's Safe Haven. The whole experience feels like a homework assignment done the night before, complete with the hilariously awful final sequence, which is the pregnant woman giving birth, except OH NO IT'S A BLOODY ARM COMING UP FROM THE DRESS the end d minus see me after class please.
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| you also might notice that the bloody hand is so evil that it's coming out of her left thigh, jesus christ |
Washing off the stink slightly is Father's Day, the best of the bunch, a sentiment echoed by my significant other so it's OFFICIAL DEAL WITH IT. It concerns a young woman receiving a tape cassette from her missing father, detailing to her how she can find him again. It's an honestly really effective film for several reasons: the locations and shots evoke a steadily rising sense of dread, the plot is simple enough to peaceably co-exist within its time limit, and the fact that said father is voiced by Michael Gross, who depending on your cultural background, you probably know as the dad from Family Ties or the crazy survivalist guy from Tremors. His voice through the tape's filter is a perfect mixture of fatherly love and "oh god no don't do that" creepiness. The only real criticism is that the ending is maybe a bit too ambiguous, but with stories like this I tend to prefer creating mystery over the "you see the truck was Dracula all along" plot poop bubble burst that occasionally appears in films like this.
It says alot about the level of quality in Holidays that the film done by Kevin Fucking Smith is arguably the second best. I mean, oh sure, Halloween basically has nothing really to do with Halloween, and yeah Kevin Smith's meathanded attempts at tacking girl power and online harassment still reeking of white duder viewpoints could be discussed ad nauseam, but it's filmed well, and there's some admittedly clever lines. You win, Kevin. Fuck.
Christmas wins the "biggest waste of potential reward," featuring Seth Green as a beleaguered husband stealing the holiday's primo toy, a VR machine that shows you what's inside your head or something, from the hands of a dying man. Unsurprisingly, he begins to see things from the perspective of the dead guy, and I settled in, expecting a serviceable, maybe even clever, techno-rehash of the "guy gets X transplant from mystery donor, things go to shit." But for some reason, perhaps due to the running length, the story goes in a totally different, absolutely absurd direction before just deciding to abruptly end.New Year's Eve is about a serial killer who finds a vulnerable date for the big ball drop and if you aren't able to figure out the twist already you haven't seen enough horror films. This one exists, and it does not offend me, but I cannot sense its being either.
So, Holidays. I could barely partake in it as a giant anthology horror nerdlord, and my slightly less irradiated girlfriend thought it was ass. Ultimately it's something to watch, but I wouldn't mark it on your calanGORE eheheheheheeeeeahhhhh.
*: a weird coincidence is that two of the other anthology horror films last year were also holiday related, though focusing on a single holiday instead of the golden HORRORAL experience, make of that what you will
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