All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018)

All the Creatures Were Stirring is a low-budget horror anthology movie released directly to Shudder in 2018 written and directed by Rebekah McKendry and David Ian McKendry, who (as you probably guessed from their names) are married. As is often the case with low-budget productions, any discussion of the movie's quality is going to be riddled with caveats and sidenotes. Depending on what you're comparing this to, what you expect out of it, and how steep of a curve you're grading on, you could describe this as fantastic, horrible, or just about anything in between.

The movie features five short films and a frame story, all of which is packed into a brisk hour twenty minutes. Unsurprisingly, that means the individual stories aren't given a great deal of space to breathe. For the most part, the characters are pretty one-dimensional, though that's not necessarily a bad thing here. The collection is basically comprised of short genre stories, each of which serves to offer a premise, deliver whatever combination of scares and laughs it's got, then move on to the next. I found the shorts pretty consistently interesting, which is all you can really ask.

Of course, it's production value where the movie comes up lacking, at least compared to more expensive films. As I said, this clearly wasn't made for much money, so anyone expecting an intricate, professionally designed and shot movie is going to be disappointed. The locations are simplistic, and the set dressing and lighting feel dictated by what was available, rather than reflecting artistic choice. 

On the other hand, what resources this had seem to have been directed towards solid gore effects and a handful of well-utilized VFX shots. In addition, the McKendrys seem adept with genre elements and capable of handling timing, so both the the horror and comedy comes through. I don't expect this will actually scare anyone, but it doesn't shoot itself in the foot the way I've seen some similarly low-budget productions do.

The frame story is built around two friends on a quasi-date on Christmas Eve. They go to a play, which turns out to be a sort of post-modern production cycling through interpretive displays of holiday horror shorts, which we of course cut to. As is customary, there's more going on here, with the male half of the date implied to be some sort of inhuman creature who may or may not devour his date afterwards, another patron being far too interested, and the last section of the play repeating the couple's dialogue from earlier as the woman watches in confused horror. It's all very silly, which the movie acknowledges as the aforementioned audience member just laughs at the end.

The first of the anthology stories is "The Stockings Were Hung," which chronicles an office Christmas party where the employees are all locked in a meeting room filling with poisonous gas, and their only hope of salvation is in the form of a white elephant gift exchange containing a mix of presents they bought for each other and those left by the sadistic killer who set all this up. The killer's packages contain an assortment of weapons, evidence of betrayal and secrets, and one gas mask the sole survivor wears out at the end. It's all fine for what it is, but this is definitely the short that could most have benefited from an expanded runtime and more character development.

Next up is "Dash Away All," one of the two best installments. Here, we get the story of a man locked out of his car on Christmas Eve in an abandoned parking lot containing a single van. The two women in that van offer him help and slowly learn about the man, taking particular interest in the fact his birthday is December 25th. By the time we learn just what's in the van, it's already killed one of the women, who tried running off before the ritual to shift the curse binding them to the demonic entity to the unsuspecting man is complete. If he ever moves more than twenty feet from the creature, it will be free, and his only hope of escaping is to find someone with the same birthday and shackle them with the curse instead. Because we're really only concerned with three characters, the runtime is perfect for the story. In addition, the location - basically just an empty parking lot - doesn't require props or dressing they can't afford. The makeup on the creature is actually quite good. You can still see this is low budget, but it feels closer to a "real movie" than anything else in the anthology.

"All Through the House," the third story, is basically a short Scrooge motif where the gimmick is that the three ghosts are more or less modern horror monsters. It's a fun idea that's executed a lot better than you'd expect given what I assume they spent... but still not quite well enough to serve as much more than a proof of concept.

Fourth up is "Arose Such a Clatter," a very simple story of a man who hits a reindeer on Christmas Eve and fails to notice the collar reading, "Blitzen," as he finishes the animal off and drags it to the side of the road. On the drive home, he's followed by a red light, which eventually kills him and his girlfriend. So... yeah, one of the sillier ones. This was also definitely a case where the lack of resources left an impression, as they didn't have a reindeer prop to use. On one hand, I respect the ingenuity of working around this (including some clever editing) but it's difficult to miss the fact they only had deer horns to play with.

Last (excluding the resolution to the frame story), there's "In a Twinkling," which ties "Dash Away All" for my favorite of the anthology. This one's by far the weirdest and is the only installment I wouldn't really describe as horror, despite a few misdirects to imply otherwise. Instead, we get the story of Steve, a man who always celebrates Christmas alone (this seems to imply he's a werewolf or something, but that's a red herring), and Gabby, his friend who insists on bringing the holidays to him despite his protests. Turns out the reason he doesn't want others around has less to do with the usual stuff and everything to do with the aliens who annually expose him to a classic television black and white Christmas dinner (I promise, whatever you're imagining, this is more bizarre). Gabby gets pulled in, as well, though - as part of dealing with the surreal experience - explains what the holidays mean to her. It turns out this fulfills whatever exactly the aliens were here to investigate, and they leave. The section closes on an uncharacteristically sweet note - in addition to science-fiction rather than horror, this paints a fairly positive picture of the holiday.

Incidentally, Gabby is played by Candace Wu - I haven't found much information about this movie online, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess her scenes were filmed before Crazy Rich Asians came out the same year. My guess is her presence here is a big part of the reason this got enough attention to show up on my radar.

The holiday elements of course connect this to the "Christmas ghost story" tradition, which seems to be making a comeback. More specifically, this also feels reminiscent of the classic 1945 British horror anthology, Dead of Night. 

Beyond that, the holiday elements vary from short to short, though they're typically playing off of traditions or common holiday associations. The exceptions are "Dash Away All" and the frame story. "Dash Away All" is mainly using the holidays to build suspense tonally. You could technically set this at any time with minor changes, but the setting leans on the sense of magic associated with Christmas to sell the horror. I'm not sure what, if anything, the demonic entity is supposed to represent, but structurally this is very close to actual folklore surrounding the holidays. Meanwhile, the frame story is basically just set at Christmas to match the rest of the anthology.

In terms of whether any of this is worth checking out, well... the answer's probably in how you reacted to that opening paragraph. It's made by industry pros, but it's still essentially a rough, handmade movie.

Within that context, there's a lot to appreciate, but if you're expecting this to look or feel like movies budgeted at ten times what this cost, you're going to be disappointed. And, so we're clear, my guess is ten times the budget of this movie would still qualify as "low budget."