Holiday Hell (2019)

Director: Jeff Farrell, Jeff Vigil, Jeremy Berg, David Burns
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology

Plot:
Headed out for Christmas Eve, a woman wanders into an open curio shop and hears tales from the owner about four potential gifts she spots inside, only for them both to hold a sinister agenda behind the visit.

Review:

Doll Face-Arriving together for a house party, a group of friends gathers at a secluded suburban house for a get-together when they notice they’re going missing one-by-one. Realizing who’s behind the disappearances, they try to outwit the deranged killer after them. This was a solid and enjoyable start. The annoying girls and their modern text-speech way of talking to each other is quite a turnoff, especially once the boyfriends arrive where it turns into hormone overdrive with them constantly trying to sleep with whoever they can. The manner in which the killer gets around to take each of the kids out, but the stalking scenes are solid and the atmosphere here is impressive due to the solid technical merits on display. As the final twist gives this a decent motivation for the part as well as the creepy mask used by the killer, this one wasn’t too bad.

The Hand That Rocks the Dreidel-Opening his last Hanukkah present, a boy receives a special rabbi doll from his parents before they have to leave for the weekend. When they’re babysitters’ true intentions are revealed, he turns to the doll to deal with the situation. This one proved to be a somewhat troubling effort. That there’s an incredibly cliché and wholly predictable setup involving the means of bringing the doll to life to toy and torment the babysitter with the ulterior motive playing around in the mansion while the kid is locked up. The arrival of the boyfriend completes the setup and makes for a truly foreseen outcome, forcing it to rely on the impressive suspense of the stalking throughout the darkened rooms of the house which are great fun. The gore effects and doll design work as well, leaving this a pretty mixed effort.

Christmas Carnage-Following a rough day at work, a down-on-his-luck company worker discovers his unsatisfied wife is sleeping with his co-worker and decides to partake some experimental drugs the company’s developed. When he awakes the next morning, he discovers the truth about the night before. This one wasn’t all that great of a segment. That so little of this one that feels like horror due to spending so much time on forcing his downtrodden nature on us. From the wife constantly picking at him to the underappreciated nature at work that’s a major cause for the homelife, this takes up so much of the running time that it fails to offer what the suits’ connection to the shops’ history means as it has nothing to do with the rampage that follows. Those scenes offer cheesy fun to this one with the gory kills but it’s too little too late.

Room to Let-Arriving at a secluded house, a woman takes a room for rent in a mansion out in the countryside for a while and finds a special surprise in store. Realizing what’s going to happen to her, she tries to overcome the forces tied to her fate. This one was a pretty enjoyable entry. The eerie, slow-burn setup here of the community out in the middle of nowhere and the quiet small-town of quiet, mysterious strangers who don’t trust her and have something sinister in mind create a wholly impressive and chilling atmosphere. The full revelation of their plans can be seen coming a mile away but doesn’t detract from this one at all due to the cold-hearted matter-of-fact nature of it all which adds a fantastic touch to the whole affair, giving this a rather strong segment overall.

Overview: ***.5/5
A rather enjoyable anthology effort with several solid segments and a couple of flawed segments, that gives this a decent enough overview where it feels rather fun if entirely not an immediate watch overall. It’s worth a look for fans of indie-flavored genre efforts or huge anthology aficionados while those that prefer more hard-edged material or upset about the lack of holiday connections in the story setup should heed caution.