Director: Michael Gabriele
Year: 2026
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Preparing for a family get-together, a man joins the rest of his family for a Christmas Eve dinner when a series of undead relatives arrive that they must include in their festivities or risk something sinister happening to his loved ones, forcing him to save them from his relatives.
Review:
This was a pretty solid if still slightly disappointing genre effort. Among the better features here is a highly effective and likable setup that manages to accomplish something interesting happening during the holiday season. With the idea of the family getting together over the holidays and going through the motions of trying to get everyone ready for the upcoming holiday, only for the undead family members to come to life and return with a hint of their former humanity still intact and generating a mystery regarding what they returned for, the central premise here is somewhat original and intriguing to start with. The fact that the dead are mostly humanoid in appearance and mannerisms, but require special treatment to understand what’s going on since they can’t be killed and can still communicate in some fashion helps to make for a fun time here as it plays with the notion of this being a regular occurrence where the main family lives and him visiting who’s unaware of everything gives this a nice bit of balance to the chaos unfolding around him.
When it comes to the situation bringing about the undead creatures into more vicious and violent confrontations, there’s plenty of likable elements. As the first few scenarios around the family meeting are based around trying to reconcile with the fact that they’ve returned despite being knowingly dead and the impossibility of the situation is recognized, it’s all about trying to help keep them calm and stop the situation from spreading. As the night goes on, the situation becomes more desperate as the relentless mindset and determined nature of the undead to carry out missions in the town and requiring the rest of the family and other surviving neighbors to have to del with them makes for some surprisingly brutal and frenetic sequences, including the brawl in the basement, the fight to keep the grandmother from escaping the house, or the battle on the frontyard where the big battle occurs that enables them to understand what’s going on. With some great reveals in the finale and some heartwarming touches on the nature of family, it all manages to give this enough to hold it up overall.
There isn’t much to dislike here, but the flaws themselves are pretty impactful. The biggest issue with this one concerns how we’re supposed to feel about the dead themselves, as everything here is pretty convoluted and never makes much sense. On the whole, they’re vicious and violent and pretty much unstoppable once they have their mind set on something, making for a straightforward attempt at something far darker in their mindset, but then the interactions have a decidedly comedic bent regarding how to make sure they don’t get loose and terrorize others. Moreover, the whole thing never once causes the family to freak out or be put off by the appearance of zombified versions of long-dead relatives, as it’s treated like a common occurrence around this time and never provides the kind of genuinely outrageous behavior that something of that magnitude would logically produce. It tends to stick out enough that, combined with the other issues here, bring this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally fun, enjoyable genre effort, there’s a lot of worthwhile factors here that help keep this one going along despite some big issues here keeping this down from what it could’ve been. Those with an interest in this style or approach or who are ardent fans of holiday horror in general will have a lot to like here, while most others might want to heed caution.
This review ran as part of our coverage of the 2026 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival. Click here to follow the rest of our articles about the festivities!
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