Mainlining Christmas

There's a real possibility this is the lowest-budgeted production I've ever looked at for this blog. Even the term "micro-budget" doesn't convey the experience of watching this. I've seen student films with significantly higher production values. And, for what it's worth, that's all intentional. This isn't trying to be "good" for any meaningful definition of that word. It's very clearly aiming for the sort of movie a group of friends might rent in the late '90s and laugh at. This was, of course, the decade of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (unsurprisingly, both Feeders and Feeders 2 were eventually covered by RiffTrax). The filmmakers behind these movies are twin brothers John and Mark Polonia, credited as co-directors on Feeders 2. Mark is also the star and wrote the script under a pseudonym. The main cast members also appear to be Mark's family, though the kids were credited under different names (possibly his wife, too - she...

Pinning this down to a genre - or even a short list of genres - is virtually impossible. The movie, for better and worse, plays like a barrage of ideas and imagery drawn from Ghostbusters, Blade, Marvel movies (Doctor Strange in particular), The Matrix, Men In Black, as well as more obscure fare - there's a surprising amount of The Frighteners in this. Meanwhile, the pacing feels like it's right out of a Michael Bay Transformers movie, which I promise is only 50% intended as an insult (Nekrotronic, for all its faults, is consistently interesting to look at, which is no small feat on a limited budget). If I had to try to classify this, I'd settle on action/adventure/comedy/horror/fantasy/superhero. More than any of that, this feels like a tongue-in-cheek two-decade-late adaptation of Mage: The Ascension (ask your parents to ask those weird people they knew in college). You'll note something was missing from that long line of genres: Christmas movie. And that's going ...

It's a bit reductive to describe this French horror movie as being about a killer advent calendar, but if anyone needs that for some kind of yuletide horror bingo card, by all means check it off. What I found most interesting about the film is its choice of subgenres and references to establish the rules and lore around the deadly box. I should caution those are minor spoilers, so read the next paragraph at your own risk. The movie's premise is ultimately revealed to be a mix of "deal-with-the-devil" and time travel elements, with the stipulation neither are explicit. The time travel, in particular, won't register as part of that subgenre to anyone who hasn't spent an abnormal amount of time considering that genre. As for the "deal-with-the-devil" thing... it's not entirely clear the monster at the center of this is a demon, at all. You could argue it's actually an angel, of the Old Testament variety. And Eva, the movie's heroine, doesn...

I mean, I put it on, so I really don't have anyone to blame but myself. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas is the third movie in the Bikini Bloodbath series, an extremely low budget horror/comedy franchise I'm guessing was not intended to be watched or considered critically (or sober, for that matter). I don't even mean that as a slight - this is the sort of thing that's mainly just in-jokes and over-the-top sequences parodying mainstream entertainment. It's not pretending it's anything other than bad, which is a good thing because - make no mistake - it is bad. I should probably add I haven't seen the first two installments, nor do I intend to. This stuff isn't for me. I'm not sure it's for much of anyone anymore, given how dated the references feel, but that's another matter. I'll do my best to offer a synopsis, but I'm not sure there's much to say. Part of the joke is there's really not a lot of story here, and what is present inte...

In general, I try to approach low and micro budget productions as gently as possible while still being honest. I understand these are working with resources orders of magnitude below the level of even small Hollywood movies, and many of these feel like labors of love being made to develop skills or just have fun. Comparing something like Two Front Teeth  with Nosferatu  would be like rating a pinewood derby car against a Formula 1 racing car: it's not even supposed to be the same thing. That why I usually refrain from being dismissive around movies like these. But handling these with kid gloves is contingent on the people making these putting in the effort to deliver the best movie possible given their circumstances. Pagan Warrior, a movie which features multiple typos in the text opening the movie, is not conducive to a feeling of goodwill. So, let's be frank: this is bad, and not in a way I found particularly interesting, though the premise is outlandish enough, your mileage...

You'll generally only see this marketed in the US under the title, "A Christmas Tale", which seems be an accurate translation, with the caveat "Cuento de Navidad" is also how "A Christmas Carol" is often translated into Spanish. The other part of the full title, "Películas para no dormir," is the series it's from, consisting of six Spanish TV horror movies originally airing in 2005. That's... actually the short  version: if I'm understanding right, they were sort of a revival for a television series called "Historias para no dormir" which was produced sporadically from the late 60s to early 80s, but let's just focus on what's at hand. I don't believe any of the other five films in the 2005 series were set at Christmas, though I'm tempted to watch to find out. Because "A Christmas Tale" (or whatever you want to call it) is absolutely phenomenal. There's no "graded on a curve" or ...

Snow Falls is a horror movie about five teenagers who are either being killed off by supernatural snow or just hallucinating due to hypothermia and hunger. The ambiguity surrounding what's causing their deterioration is intentional; the movie being bad is presumably less so. Okay, that was a little harsh. Snow Falls has some decent moments in it, and I need to hedge any criticism with the caveat I'm unclear how much this thing cost to put together (aside from "not very much", which is obvious). I do think it's important to consider budget when discussing movies like these, as well as what the movie was supposed to accomplish for the filmmakers. If they hoped to create something capable of attracting a following like that of  The Lodge , they were way off the mark. On the other hand, if this was produced for very  little money with the goal of displaying a competency with genre... I mean, it's still not a homerun, but there are a handful of good shots scattered...

I try not to be overly dismissive of movies in genres I'm not entirely familiar with, but I find it extraordinarily difficult to find anything in "Last Stop on the Night Train" (or whatever they're calling it these days) that justifies it being made. I should note I haven't seen either "The Last House on the Left" or "The Virgin Spring," the movies this is apparently emulating ("Second House on The Left" is one of many titles this was released under in English). I take some solace in the fact that the consensus among genre fans seems to lean towards this being a cheap knock-off, rather than existing in conversation with its predecessors in any kind of interesting way I'm missing. That's not to say "Last Stop on the Night Train" isn't saying anything - it has themes and was competently filmed. But an extended series of sexual assaults overtakes the film in a way that feels grossly exploitative and leaves you with ...

It's not hard to see why this thriller was forgotten despite starring Kim Basinger as a suburban housewife being hunted by murderers in the woods on a rainy Christmas Eve in what could have been sold as an R-rated, feminist response to Home Alone, had the movie been good enough to capitalize on any of that. The last few minutes, for what it's worth, are actually pretty good and provide something of an demonstration of what the movie as a whole was going for. This wants to be a sort of modern parable, meant to be experienced viscerally, rather than considered rationally. If it were being made today, the last decade of horror would offer a template for managing this effect. Unfortunately, it was made in 2008, and as such mostly leverages the cinematic language of suspense from that era. The story here is bare bones. Della is a housewife with two kids she loves, an abusive husband she does not, and an immense amount of anxiety and regret. After a harrowing encounter with said husb...

Based on the handful of reviews available, I'm pretty sure I liked this more than most who saw it, and I didn't like it. The Open House draws inspiration from various horror subgenres, including haunted house, home invasion, and slashers. Until the end, the movie leaves you in the dark as to which direction (or directions) it's going to break. The conclusion feels like they just picked one out of a hat and went with it, ultimately delivering a film about the existential terror of [checks notes] okay, it's actually just about open houses. Like, having strangers come to your house. That's it.  Perhaps I'm being a bit uncharitable, but for all the setup surrounding being haunted by trauma, fear of rural communities, and family strife, the movie just sort of reveals its big idea was just the obvious one in the title. Some random stranger we never see clearly was in the house all along. Somehow. We never really get much of an explanation on the logistics, just the id...

Not to be confused with any of the scores of non-Ukrainian-horror movies with the same title, this centers around a woman trapped on a desolate mountainside in Georgia (the country, not the state) being hunted by someone on a snowmobile. The movie has a couple merits - we'll get to those - but on the whole this is style over substance where the style gets old quickly. Director and co-writer Stanislav Kapralov is trying to create a modern Christmas ghost story, but he's stretching material appropriate for a short into a full length movie. By the time we get to the end, we've figured out the two or three twists the movie could take, and when we get to the final reveal, there's no way it can't be anticlimactic. The movie, which features five significant characters and maybe twice as many bit parts, probably didn't cost an awful lot to make, but it had the resources for some realistic (and at times disturbing) make-up effects. Visually, it compares to US movies with...