Director: ViV Darko
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Hosting a holiday-themed special, a maniacal ghoul tells a series of holiday-themed stories to a group of elves.
Review:
The Abominable Appetite-Gathered together for the holidays, a family tries to prepare a special cannibalistic feast only to find their party crashed by a more deadly threat than they imagined. This was a fairly strong and enjoyable way to start this. The whole idea of the family squabbling with each other while trying to get together for the holidays is a solid way to start this, giving them a bizarre and confrontational mindset during the holiday season. The festivities being interrupted, first by the blackout that throws everything off before finding their house crashed by a vicious creature, takes the twist into a fine realm where its unexpected nature is a lot of fun, and while the focus is on the family drama more than the interactions with the creature as that’s presented as an afterthought more than anything, it’s still really fun.
The Boy in the Poinsettia-Trying to make the best of the situation, a family finds themselves stuck with a serial killer in a Santa costume targeting them for a wish to a mall Santa. As a whole, this was a fairly fun effort even if it doesn’t make much sense. The brief bits on display here about the strained family relationship make for a strong start so that the fateful wish at the mall feels earned and gets them targeted by the killer after hearing about their plight, resulting in some strong gore here when that occurs. Still, the whole purpose of this one makes little sense, from how the killer Santa targets other Santas for what they do in their interactions with others to how they get brought together in the final twist that they are, as its brief length doesn’t make for much time to divulge these facets, lowering this slightly.
The Nutcracker-Meeting by chance and falling in love, a ballerina and a nutcracker try to make their romance work despite the nutcracker’s irrational violence towards rats to threaten everything. This was a spectacular segment with quite a lot to like about it. Most of that is tied up in the stellar creativity of the segment to retell the fabled opera as a short skit, bringing their lives together and focusing their burgeoning romance through their dance recreations of the whole thing as the make-up work brings them to life and the blaring soundtrack creates the perfect ambiance. The great gore and the generally cheesy charm here go a long way to complete the picture, and while some might find fault with the general presentation coming off as a dialogue-free short with just the soundtrack playing, there’s a lot to like here.
And All Through the House-Tired of her lot in life, a woman’s plans to kill off her family and escape to a life she wants are thwarted by the arrival of a Santa-masked killer. This was a fantastic enough way to close this one and has a lot to like. Once again taking the familiar setup and managing to give this some fun inversions on the formula that the segment before utilized, there’s a fun enough setup at play where the fateful murder and attempt to escape while making it out to be the work of someone else gives this a solid opening hook. Subsequent escape attempts and confrontations where other neighbors and bystanders are included alongside other standout chases highlighting the killer’s brutality are a lot of fun, as again it’s mainly the familiar here with recreating the popular story verbatim is a bit too much to knock this down.
Overview: ****/5
An immensely fun and generally enjoyable holiday-themed anthology, this is a lot of fun and offers up quite a lot of fun segments here that are quite enough to hold off the few minor issues in here. Those who are intrigued by this style of genre fare, generally enjoy either holiday-themed or anthology films, or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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