Holidays (2016): Everything

Another horror anthology because they’re my favorite. Plus, each anthology takes place on a different holiday, so it was basically MADE for this blog. I figured since we are officially entering the “holiday season” it would be an appropriate time to review this film. The shorts range from bad to very good so I’ll just briefly review each one.

Valentine’s Day: 

A girl on a high school swim team has a massive crush on her coach. When he sees her being mercilessly bullied he decides to give her a Valentine, as a kind gesture. However, due to the depth of her obsession this turns out to be a mistake. This one is pretty good, a little predictable, but well done. It was very enjoyable to look at. The director/writer also did Starry Eyes and I kind of felt the same about that: it was alright, but was visually very interesting.

Holiday rating: 8 hearts

St Patricks Day:

Okay, so for some reason I fucking love this short. It’s weird as hell, but like… I’m into it. This one takes place in Ireland, where a school teacher who dreams of being a mother, struggles to work with one of her quieter students. It’s very weird and i don’t want to reveal much else. I feel some people might think this one is stupid, but for me it’s weirdly funny so it works.

Holiday rating: 8 shamrocks

Easter:

I liked this one more than the first and less than the second. In this one, a little girl is questioning her mother about the existence of the easter bunny (a not so thinly veiled metaphor for jesus) and is in for a surprise when he finally arrives. This one is creepy and is trying to be a little deeper than the others (and that’s understandable since easter is one of the most important christian holidays). The bunny himself is really creepy, but also kind of hilarious if you’re a heathen like me.

Holiday rating: 7 easter eggs

Mother’s Day:

Meh. This woman is cursed with getting pregnant every time she has sex, no matter what she does in forms of protection or prevention. She goes to this witch coven to try to stop this process, but discovers that the witches are planning to use her for something a little different. I like this one celebrates the female form and motherhood but I unfortunately the plot is just weak. Like it’s all there aesthetically and everything, it just didn’t work. It’s like… they had all the ingredients but still made the cake wrong. Meh.

Holiday rating: 6… moms? I haven’t really thought through a rating system for this one.

Father’s Day:

A woman receives a cassette tape from her father, who has been missing for years. As she listens to the tape she follows to where he disappeared with promises of being reunited. But what she finds is not what she expected. I liked this one. I think a problem I had with it though is that it built the tension so well that I think whatever they could have shown us at the end wouldn’t have lived up to what I’d been creating in my mind. Still though, one of the better of the bunch. I’m surprised I liked this one as much as I did because I’m not normally a huge fan of this director’s work.

Holiday rating: 7 dads… I guess, Idfk

Halloween:

A porn recruiter/pimp guy treats his employees like shit. The girls finally reach their breaking point and decide to exact their revenge on him. This short was directed by Kevin Smith and features his daughter as one of the porn girls (weird). It also features an unrecognizable Ashley Greene. This one is just weird and dumb and I think it’s definitely my least favorite of the bunch. However, a Halloween short was probably easier to fuck up because there’s already so many great Halloween themed pieces of media out there.

Holiday rating: 6 pumpkins

Christmas:

A man breaks his morals in order to get a virtual reality device that helps you see whatever you desire for his son for Christmas. However, what he has done begins to haunt him and the VR device begins to force him to relive it. He soon begins to fear what will happen if someone else sees what he has done. I really enjoyed this one, I mean of course it has the moral underlying about consumerism and materialism and whatnot, but it was honestly very clever. It starred Seth Greene as the dad and it really works well as few play paranoid and frustrated better than he.

Holiday rating: 7 christmas trees

New Year’s Eve: 

This one is for sure my favorite of the bunch. A serial killer goes on a date with a woman for New Years Eve, but he soon learns that his planned victim may be just as disturbed as he is. This one is my favorite of the bunch. One, because I think New Years Eve is an underutilized holiday, but also it’s really really funny. But it’s also got a decent amount of gore (not a ton, but enough). This was also written by the Starry Eyes guys, but it was directed by someone else and I have to say this is my favorite of their work. So maybe they’re just still learning how to translate from page to screen. Either way, I love this one.

Holiday rating: 9 new calendars

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982): Halloween

What a beaut. This is a bad movie, but it’s campy. So like, it’s kind of an awesome movie. I think it’s better than it got credit for in the 80’s, I mean people were just so outraged that Michael Meyers wasn’t in it they didn’t give it a chance. I like the first Halloween movie, but I’m not a huge fan of the franchise. I honestly wish this movie had done better so it would have developed the way the creators had imagined it. The wanted the franchise not to be centered around Michael Meyers, but for each film to be a different installment in an anthology, all set during Halloween. I think that would’ve been more interesting than how the franchise actually went, but we got what we got. Anyway, this movie is about a man and woman who are trying to investigate a murder they think is linked to this mysterious Halloween mask company, Silver Shamrock (the song will be stuck in your head for weeks I promise you). It’s full of trick or treaters and costumes and gore. It’s honestly a great, silly horror movie to watch on Halloween night.

Netflix available? No

Hulu available? No

Xfinity available? Yes, for a fee

Holiday rating: 10 pumpkins

Ginger Snaps (2000): Halloween

YAAAAAS. This is one of my favorite films of all times because I was a morbid, angry teenager and these girls did how I felt SO much better than I ever did. Like they do photoshoots of themselves dying in different ways. They’re mean to their parents because hormones and teens and whatnot. They aren’t cool, they’re just weird. This movie follows two sisters who don’t fit in. One turns into a werewolf and the other begins to work tirelessly to save her and change her back. This movie is well known as being a fairly accurate metaphor for puberty and how much it sucks to be a teenager. It’s very gory and campy and wonderful and is perfect for Halloween. It’s definitely on the short list for your October movie marathon.

Netflix available? No

Hulu available? Yes

Xfinity available? Yes

Holiday rating: 9 pumpkins

Trick ‘r Treat (2007): Halloween

SAM! I love this movie. It’s a well-made, sadly under-known, horror anthology. However, they all tie together a little bit unlike all anthologies. There are four main stories including a murderous principle, four hot girls looking for some action, some middle schoolers playing a mean prank, and a grumpy old man with a dark past. I don’t want to ruin the stories and how they all connect so I’ll just leave it there. This movie is the perfect Halloween film. It’s fun, it’s gory, and it’s got Halloween coming out the wazoo. Literally every single scene has some kind of Halloween decoration or costume or candy in it, it’s amazing. I 100% recommend this for people who love horror and halloween because you’ll get the best of both.

Netflix available? No

Hulu available? No

Xfinity available? Yes, for a fee

Holiday rating: 10 pumpkins

The Wicker Man (2006): Halloween

This is one of my favorite movies of all time because it’s one of those movies that is so bad it circles back around and manages to be so entertaining and wonderful. The film stars Nicholas Cage; most people probably are familiar with his “NOT THE BEES” scene and my personal favorite line, “what’s in the bag, a shark or something?” The only reason this really counts as a Halloween movie is because it’s supposed to be a horror movie, and is a remake of the 1973 film of the same name, which is far superior. The film follows a police officer who is contacted by his former fiancee who informs him that her daughter, Rowan, is missing and she needs his help. She lives with a strange matriarchal cult on an isolated island. He soon finds people are pretending Rowan never existed and he begins to suspect that she is going to be sacrificed. He races to save her before time runs out.

In the original film, the cult is not a matriarchal one, but a pagan one, and the police officer is a catholic. To be perfectly honest I can appreciate what the remake was TRYING to do. Horror films are often a reflection of society’s fears at the time when they are produced (I don’t think I’m stating anything groundbreaking here, but just so we’re on the same page). So in the early 70’s when young people were leaving the church at high rates and embracing a culture their parents couldn’t even begin to understand, the idea of a pagan society existing was scary, unsettling, concerning at the very least. Having a protagonist that was religiously devout being thrust into a pagan society, where his kind was not only unwelcome but going to be sacrificed, played on those fears.

Flash forward to 2006: being religious is not a necessity anymore, freedom of religion is generally enforced, and fewer people still are going to church. The idea of a pagan society isn’t that scary because it isn’t threatening the majority’s way of life. However, the fourth wave of feminism was just arising (although some contest it’s merely a continuation of third wave, but that’s not important) and more and more people were able to access feminist ideas and writings because of the internet and the early forms of social media. So I think it was an interesting way for director LaBute to attempt to update the story and make the threat a society that has far surpassed equality and become oppressively matriarchal. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work… as a serious film. As a comedy though? GOLD.

Netflix available? Yes

Hulu available? No

Xfinity available? No

Holiday rating: 3 pumpkins

Jaws (1975): Summer

Dun-nun. Dun-nun. What a classic. What a masterpiece. A movie that made me afraid of all bodies of water for longer than I’d like to admit. This movie follows a resort town that is being terrorized by a giant man-eating shark and the men who try to stop it. So obviously because this movie involves the ocean and a shark it screams summer. This is one of the best animal horror movies of all time. I love this movie so so much and everyone should watch it. I don’t know what else to say. I would include it in Halloween because it’s horror, but the setting really does lend better to a summer vibe.

Netflix available? No

Hulu available? No

Xfinity available? Yes, for a fee

Holiday rating: 7 surfboards