A movie like Holidays is like a potluck dinner at a family get-together. You don’t really know what you should eat but you’re sure you’re not going to like most of what you choose.
Anthologies are like that. They usually have a few good segments, a few not so good and a few you can totally avoid. I wouldn’t say they’re bad, but the filmmakers are usually restrained by a time frame that hurts the story telling.
It’s no surprise that the segments that work the best are by more accomplished filmmakers. Kevin Smith has the best segment with “Halloween” mainly because it’s so simple but the pay-off shows how twisted this New Jersey Devil can be. Harley Mortensten plays Ian, a sleazy, abusive blowhard who tricks young gullible women into working for him as they cam on adult porno sites while letting them have little of the money and benefits. This movie was released 10 years ago during the spring of 2016 before OnlyFans took over the medium.
And Harley Quinn Smith plays one of the young women who get revenge when Ian goes too far. It’s sick and demented but it’s also comical the way Ian gets his comeuppance. I haven’t seen Smith’s Tusks and only watched five minutes of Yoga Hosers but Smith has shown with Red State that he’s capable of changing up his game to scare and thrill us.
The second best segment is “Valentine’s Day,” in which a teenage girl, Maxine (Madeline Coglan), is bullied and harassed by a group of mean girls led by Heidi (Savannah Kennick) in P.E. class. It’s obvious Maxine has a crush on her teacher Coach Rockwell (Rick Peters) who has a heart condition and needs a transplant. As usual, Heidi is a rich girl who is helping organize a fund-raiser for Rockwell so he has to turn a blind eye to the cruelty.
But Maxine who the girls call “Maxi-Pad” gets her revenge on Heidi. It’s disturbing and just about everyone who was ever bullied will like the vengeance deep down. Also, the writing/directing duo of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer know they can get more with less. During one scene, the camera is angled so we see how goofy Heidi actually looks and Coghlan’s timid awkwardness makes her more likeable even though she is going to get really bloody with her actions.
“Christmas” has a great set-up that feels like it would’ve worked better if it had been stretched to a Tales from the Crypt half-hour episode. Pete Gunderson (Seth Green) wants to get his son a uVu, a virtual reality headset that allows people to see images in POV. However, Pete is a few minutes late from getting the last one at the store and another man gets it. He refuses an offer from Pete to buy it but as he’s going through the parking lot suffers a heart attack.
Rather than help, Pete takes the device and has a great Christmas morning with his son and hostile wife, Sara (Clare Grant). When Pete initially uses the uVu, he sees a nude woman wanting to perform oral sex on him. But eventually he begins to see events through the eyes of the dead man.
Unfortunately filmmaker Scott Stewart cuts short what could’ve been a great pay-off. Green and Grant are married in real life and they must’ve had fun playing a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. But there’s so much more here that would’ve worked better if it had been expanded into a longer segment.
“New Year’s Eve” is the best of the bad segments mostly because we know where it’s going and it doesn’t disappoint. Andrew Bowen plays Reggie who is a serial killer who targets women. When he goes out on a date with his next intended target, Jean (Lorenza Izzo), things don’t turn out the way he thought.
The segment was written by Kolsch and Widmyer but directed by Adam Eqypt Mortimer. Izzo had already appeared in Knock Knock and The Green Inferno, both directed by her then-husband Eli Roth. The segment is short and delivers the way it should. But the twist is obvious from the start. I feel it was just added so the movie could end with more of a bang.
Both “St. Patrick’s Day” and “Mother’s Day” deal with Rosemary’s Baby-like pregnancies. I can understand “Mother’s Day” which is about a coven of witches using a woman, Kate (Sophie Traub), to be the gateway so they can all get pregnant even though it’s boring and just an excuse for nudity. However, “St. Patrick’s Day” involves a school teacher, Elizabeth Cullen (Ruth Bradley), becoming pregnant with a snake-hybrid makes no sense.
I guess because there’s already a film franchise about killer leprechauns there wasn’t much to choose from. But this feels out of place. And that’s the entire problem with this movie. There’s not much of a coherence. It feels less like an anthology than a bunch of short movies that were cobbled together. There’s two segments about pregnancies and two segments that make references to witches. And “Easter” is the weakest one as it involves the Easter Bunny as a creepy rabbit humanoid. And “Father’s Day” totally ruins its premise by having Michael Gross (from Family Ties) whose voice we only here on a cassette tape.
I feel the powers that be behind this were looking to piggyback off the success of the V/H/S horror franchise which had gone sour after the third entry. Yet when you can totally skip through more than half the movie, you know it’s not worth your time.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 