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HOLIDAY HELL

FINALLY. A CRAPPY HORROR MOVIE FOR THE HANUKKAH CROWD.



★★☆☆☆ (Don’t Bother)

Director: Jeff Vigil, Jeff Ferrell, David Burns, Jeremy Berg

2019


A shopkeeper (Jeffrey Combs) is closing up his funeral home/curiosity shop at night when a mysterious young woman wanders in and begs him to stay open so she can find an odd Christmas gift for her sister. Their cutesy banter leads to him telling her the stories behind the items she’s interested in because, according to him, stories are more important than humans because they live long after we die.


Holiday Hell uses this format to give us four short films that are not connected, but are supposed to involve Valentine’s Day, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Unfortunately, this thin movie commits the ultimate crime of having “holiday anemia” by tricking the audience with a gimmick and then pulling the rug out from under them. With the exception of Story Three—when Christmas is the lynchpin of the tale—there is barely a mention of festivities and not a sign of a decoration if you don’t count the menorah that’s on the screen for five seconds in Story Two. Other choices are just as confusing; the goth army and lack of technology makes the movie as a whole feel outdated and lost. If it weren’t for Jeffrey Combs (and you get a lot of him) and that third story, Holiday Hell wouldn’t be worth a minute of your time, and would end up festering at the bottom of a Walmart bin.


I’ve decided to make this a Battle of the Stories, but I can’t find a lot of information about Holiday Hell online, so I’m just going to make up their titles. WARNING: There will be SPOILERS



“Dollface and the B.J.”


This short film is worse than any student project I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t even call it cinema.


I’m guessing someone had weekend access to Grandma’s nice condo because the entire plot is just teenagers attending a party at the house and going into different rooms and getting killed by a girl in a mask named “Dollface”, who supposedly went crazy on Valentine’s Day long ago. I was amused that they tried to sell us Grandma’s modern, professionally-decorated condo as a spoooky haunted house, complete with one character carrying a lantern around despite the lights above.


Every scene quickly begins and ends as if there’s an egg timer ticking in the background, and the dialogue sounds like improv. With the exception of Deaf Girl and her Friend, we don’t get to know anyone well before Dollface kills offscreen. Two happenings are memorable.: One, when Deaf Girl screams and nothing comes out of her mouth, and two, the out of nowhere b.j. that occurs between Friend and a man who just arrived at the house. A twist at the end is supposed to rock our world, but there were no clues or hints earlier, and we didn’t even have time to process what just happened.


An actual line: “Oh my God, your hands are so soft. Literally just like a baby panda.”



“A Kid Kvelled Over a Doll”


One of the kindest things we do as children is make our parents feel that they gave us an awesome present when they didn’t. Young Kevin has to do just that when Mom and Dad hand him an old Rabbi doll as a Hanukkah gift. Instead of saying, “This isn’t the video game I asked for,” Kevin smiles and takes his doll upstairs as his parents get ready to leave on a weekend trip.


I laughed twice in Holiday Hell—when the Deaf Girl in Story One screamed and nothing came out of her mouth, and when Kevin’s parents tell Lisa the babysitter that he’ll probably be upstairs all weekend playing with his doll. The parents leave and that’s when we and Kevin find out that this young lady is a really a thief who plans on gutting the house for valuables with her bandana-wearing boyfriend. Lisa locks the kid in his room and he is left petting his doll and pleading for help. The rest will be pretty obvious.


Like most terrible movies, characters are either all good or all bad. Lisa is hilariously evil as she paces the home and cackles about all the things she will steal. She also warns Kevin that she’s cut a kid before and she’s not afraid to do it again. That’s the last time his parents will use Care.com. It’s nice to see filmmakers finally thinking about Hanukkah horror, but I don’t think the Chosen people are going to embrace a story about a doll that has nothing to do with their faith. Replace the Rabbi with Chucky and the plot would not change. Haven’t the Jews been through enough?



“Angry Santa”


This is the real movie in Holiday Hell, a character-driven piece that I wouldn’t mind watching again. This sad story about an older man who is beaten down to the breaking point is superior to the others in acting, writing, and direction. Shots are seamless and the dialogue is funny and real. A lot of credit goes to actor Joel Murray (playing Angry Santa), who does an excellent job portraying a family man who is trying to keep his chin up as he’s disrespected by everyone.


Businessman Chris has gained a little weight since quitting smoking and drinking, and his wife isn’t afraid to point that out. She also refuses to sleep with him, and chides him for not being man enough to get the promotion at work. At the company Christmas party that night, he plays Santa until he finds his wife cheating in an office with his greatest rival. Needless to say, this act of betrayal makes him fall off the wagon, try his company’s new experimental drug, and go back to slaughter whoever is in his way. It’s both depressing and profound thanks to Murray at the wheel. I’d also like to add that Jeff Davis* is hilarious as the coke-snorting weasel banging Chris’ wife and stealing his promotion. “Angry Santa” straddles the fine line between dark humor and horror gracefully. I have nothing bad to say. Kudos to whoever directed this.



“The Ring”


The final story is nothing short of a letdown because you can see the ending from a mile away thanks to a myriad of better movies out there with a similar plot. The minute a young woman arrives at a secluded bed and breakfast in a secluded town after running away from home, we know that them townsfolk are trouble. A few neat additions, like the girl working at the feed store, could have upped the creep factor if given more time, but the directors/writers just couldn’t let this plot marinate. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this poor runaway’s days are numbered and why.


Also, don't ask me which holiday was represented in "The Ring". I can't remember because they throw around a few Easter or Valentine's decorations or whatever. Just enough to shoehorn this entry into Holiday Hell.


“The Ring” is the most important story in Holiday Hell because it’s meant to be the glue holding the whole film together, but any revelation that comes from the end of this tale only elicits a “meh”. Jeffrey Combs is a treasure and is sure to delight you, but if you’re looking for a movie to get you in the holiday mood, this isn’t it.



Which Story Will You Watch?

  • "Dollface and the B.J."

  • “A Kid Kvelled Over a Doll”

  • “Angry Santa”

  • "The Ring"




*There is very little information about Holiday Hell, so if this is not the correct actor in this part, let me know.





GENRES: Diverse Characters, Funny, Monster/Creature, Serial Killer


NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this website's (nicolinatorres.com) blog posts or publications to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

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