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Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

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Both of the following statements can be true: Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 is a rushed, direct-to-video production that barely qualifies as an actual movie, and - based on what director Lee Harvey was working with - it's shocking it's not far worse. The original plan was to release recut footage from the first movie as a new movie in a bait-and-switch scheme to trick fans into handing over more money. And, to be clear, repackaged clips are still a significant part of the sequel, with most of the first half devoted to a series of flashbacks to famous scenes from part one. But the team making this managed to secure a modest budget and a rushed shooting schedule, and were able to cobble together something that could be reasonably called a movie. They deserve credit for that. Maybe a little more than that, too. While the movie isn't at all good, it contains sections and choices that are smarter - or at least more ethical - than you might expect, particularly when compare...
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Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)

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Well. That wasn't remotely what I was expecting. And, just so we're on the same page, that's a very good thing. I should probably get used to this subgenre (or in this case movies marketed within the subgenre) surprising me, particularly since I kind of predicted the turn said subgenre was due to take a few years ago. But, yeah, based on the initial teaser, I was ready to write this off as an overly-nostalgic homage to a horror film that I have... let's go with "mixed feelings" about. That's being generous, by the way - I didn't enjoy the 1984 film at all , though I see the appeal. There's some smart stuff going on in that movie if you can look past the misogynistic exploitation, the slow pacing, and the nihilistic cloud hanging over the whole thing. I certainly preferred the original to  the 2012 remake , which basically turned up the volume on everything distasteful about the original while dumbing down the premise and themes to the point there w...
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It's October. You know what that means.

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Actually, you probably don't know what that means, at least as far as this site is concerned. Hell, I still don't entirely know what it means, and I'm writing this. Last year, it meant a Christmas horror movie a day, every day, for the entire month of October, followed by daily holiday movies through November and December. Let's just rip the band aid off now and make it clear that isn't happening this year. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say my free time has been largely taken up by other commitments in 2026, leaving me with a fraction of the time I'd require to watch and review 90+ movies. What fraction? About half. Maybe a little more, depending on how things go between now and December 25th. But daily updates starting on October 1st are right out. That said, I don't want to throw out all the changes we made last year. Spreading these out meant fewer reviews got lost in the commotion, and I think there's something to the "Ch...
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One Battle After Another (2025)

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As is customary in these situations, I'll start by stating the obvious: One Battle After Another is a movie with Christmas-related elements, but it's not something I'd describe as a Christmas movie. The elements in question are interesting, unusual, and initially confusing, as is the movie itself. To a degree, I think that's intentional - One Battle After Another exists in a world similar to ours but more exaggerated, one where both the right and left sides of the political spectrum are sort of caricatures of their real-life counterparts, as imagined by their opponents. Or at least I think that's what Paul Thomas Anderson intended while writing and directing the film, only reality sort of intervened in ways that leave you feeling as though his movie wasn't just set in a different universe but was imported from one, as well. The revolutionaries of the film are essentially the lawless renegades described by Fox News when they warn their viewers about armed Antifa ...
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Four Rooms (1995)

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I remember watching this anthology at least a few times back in the '90s - while it didn't have much of a theatrical run, it was weird enough to be a popular VHS rental (at least in circles I hung out with) back when that was a thing. The gimmick here is the movie tells four stories, one after the other, about four bizarre experiences a new bellhop has on New Year's Eve, with each of the four stories set in separate rooms and written and directed by different filmmakers: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. The two names in that list you recognize are the two whose segments work, though it's not at all clear which way the causal relationship goes there. Apparently there were some major cuts required by the producer, and those came from Anders's and Rockwell's segments (the "producer" in question was Harvey Weinstein, in case you needed more reason to empathize with those directors). Since the uncut versions were ...
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Y2K (2024)

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As someone old enough to remember the kind of movies Y2K is an homage to, this one's kind of difficult to rate objectively. Because on one hand, this is a damn near perfect recreation of a type of late '90s genre/comedy hybrid that permeated the era. Aside from the genre-pivot (which feels like it's reverse-engineered from Krampus ) and some of the gore effects being a little too advanced, this is more or less exactly what this movie would have looked and felt like had it been released in 1999. And making fun of Y2K paranoia was absolutely a popular pastiche as the millennium approached, so this wouldn't have felt out of place in theaters. Hell, I half suspect the only reason something with this exact premise wasn't released was studios, which relied much more on DVD sales and TV rights at the time, would have assumed there wouldn't be any interest in the film after January 1st, 2000. So on one hand, this is the movie it sets out to be, which should be a win. On...
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Let's Call it a Year

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 I suppose the theme here this year was horror, but then wasn't that the theme for 2025 everywhere? Regardless, we mixed things up by starting far earlier than we ever have in the past, posting a Christmas horror movie review every day in October. I'm not planning on doing that again next year, but then again I wasn't planning on it this year, so who knows? There's certainly more than enough holiday entries in the genre to make it possible. We are planning to come back in some capacity next year, though I'm not sure what that will look like in terms of duration or frequency of reviews... or even if I want reviews to remain my focus. Over the past decade or so, I've been interested in exploring the ways that holiday media evolved, and I actually think I'm starting to get a grasp on that. At some point, I should probably consolidate those theories into a form that's intelligible. But that sounds like a "next year problem." For now, let's take...
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