Mainlining Christmas

I'm honestly not sure whether I'd count Blind Justice as a holiday movie (with the holiday in question being New Year's Eve, rather than Christmas). A significant portion of the movie - more than a quarter of the total runtime - is set on New Year's, and there are thematic elements tied to the holiday. But at the same time, those elements aren't as immediately obvious to modern viewers, and this certainly doesn't feel like any kind of Christmas movie most people are familiar with. I'm explaining this upfront in case anyone specifically looking for Christmas (or New Year's) movies stumbles across this review: Blind Justice probably isn't going to scratch that itch. But at the same time, this is a Danish silent film from 1916 written, directed, and starring Benjamin Christensen, who'd go on to make Häxan. You bet your ass I want to explore how he integrated the holidays into a melodrama with (vaguely) proto-slasher tones. Very vaguely, I should add...

Your experience with "How to Deter a Robber" is going to depend on your expectations for the film and what you want out of it. This is a low-budget suspense/comedy that understands its budget limitations and works around them. Despite some over-the-top characters, the movie is more grounded in reality than things of this type usually are. If you go into this wanting a surreal nightmare brought to life, you're going to be disappointed. The movie doesn't deliver buckets of blood or a high body count, the villains aren't evil (or at least one of them isn't), and the protagonists aren't action heroes. To the movie's credit, this is criticizing power fantasies ( Home Alone , in particular), not trying to replicate them. All of that is clever and entertaining, but it does come with a bit of a caveat. While the movie is amusing and fun, it's not amazing or emotionally moving. It's a solid hour and a half that offers an experience more in line with wat...

Await Further Instructions is a low-budget Christmas horror flick exploring themes around surveillance, authority, religion, terrorism and the ways liberalism versus conservativism view these ideas. Despite a small cast and virtually the entire movie being relegated to a single house, there are a lot of ideas being played with, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. The movie is engrossing, but by the end credits it left me a little confused what, if anything, it was trying to say. That's not automatically a problem - movies which pose questions without answering them can absolutely work, particularly in this genre. But this one feels allegorical in a way that left me digging for a message or point I don't think was delivered (or at least not clearly enough to be satisfying). On top of that, the movie chooses to make its characters simplistic in ways that prevent them from having strong arcs. Again, that's not a dealbreaker, but it places more weight on plot reveals to mak...

I'd say this low-budget sci-fi/horror flick was surprisingly good, but the truth is I chose it among a list of other low-budget Christmas movies because it had an unusually good reputation. Despite having the hallmarks of a small production - contained setting, small cast, mostly shot in the dark - this one manages to deliver a solid survivalist horror movie. The caveat to that is Alien Raiders doesn't deliver anything on top of this: the movie is a good entry in the genre, but it's not subverting, advancing, or transforming that genre in any way. If you've seen movies like this before (and if you're watching something called Alien Raiders, you almost certainly have), you also know the plot beats, premise, and twists. I'm not trying to take anything away from this movie or what first-time director Ben Rock was able to accomplish. Low-budget horror flicks are dime-a-dozen, and they're almost never handled with anywhere near this level of skill. This practical...

I think the most immediate thing you need to know about this movie before deciding whether to watch it or not is that writer/director Alice Maio Mackay is currently twenty years old, and this is not remotely her first movie. The fact she's making anything at that age, let alone horror films receiving relatively wide distribution, critical attention, and a growing fan base represents an awesome achievement, even before factoring in the fact this is a competently directed genre movie. However, that does mean we're talking about a microbudget independent production lacking the resources of a major studio. The narrative also stumbles at times... just not anywhere near as many times as you'd expect from something written and directed by a twenty-year-old. I wanted to open with that to explain why this is going to be tough to review. Compared against most low-budget independent films I've seen, Carnage for Christmas feels professional. But compared against, say, a five- or te...

The case for Jacob's Ladder being a Christmas movie is a weak one, no matter how you cut it. But it's also a weird case, which makes me more interested than I'd otherwise be in a movie where holiday credentials are relatively ephemeral. In the past, I've argued any movie where half or more is set around the holidays should be considered holiday media, even if visual reminders or references to the season are scant or intentionally obscured. In the case of Jacob's Ladder, the majority of the movie is set during this period. And also it isn't. That contradiction is quite literally built into the framework of the movie, though whether its (extremely loose) holiday connections are meaningful or trivial is less clear. In a moment, I'll try and provide at least a little context for all this, but - considering this movie has some passionate fans - I feel like I should at least give anyone who hasn't seen this a chance to jump ship before I spoil the film's s...

Some of my least favorite reviews to write are low-budget, independent horror flicks. They're ambitious, they're low budget, they almost always have interesting premises, and - of course - they're almost always pretty bad. Silent Bite, a movie about a group of bank robbers who find themselves hiding out in a mostly abandoned hotel on Christmas Eve alongside a family of hungry vampire dominatrixes, is no exception. Despite some above-average performances and a couple unexpectedly good comedic sequences, the movie leaves you far more bored than you'd think possible given a 90-minute runtime and that premise.  I should note that I have only tidbits of information about this production. There's no Wikipedia page for the film, and a cursory internet search didn't reveal any in depth articles or interviews. This was made by a small production company that appears to specialize in this sort of thing. It was produced and written by Simon Phillips (who also plays one of ...