Romance Christmas movies start off with animosity between the leads most of the time. But this wasn't just animosity. Chad is dishonest, unethical, rude, arrogant, and a complete jerk. He's physically aggressive, taking things out of her hands. That's not temporary animosity, many of those are innate personality qualities. It continues for half the movie. Julia didn't appeal to me much either, but I definitely don't want to see her with Chad, ever. Then at the half way point, all the meanness and aggressiveness magically disappears. Still, there's never any real chemistry.
About a quarter of the movie is mundane stuff leading up to the premise of the leads being thrown together on the farm almost like prisoners. Not that the premise makes any sense - they even need to borrow used and ugly clothes???
The plot is thin. There's a lot of filler. There's several musical montages.
If you read a review here referring to "aliens" and "a zombie", those are metaphors. That fooled me for a bit and was actually the main reason I stuck past the beginning. Some things here are creepy, but not supernatural. After a while it goes from creepy, annoying and boring to only barely better than boring. There are a couple of unexpected things at the end leading to the inevitable.
I often remark that realism isn't expected in movies like this. There are plenty of problems with realism in various situations in this movie, but that's expected. I do want plausible and likeable personalities in the leads. I couldn't get past my conviction that Chad could never change from the downright bad person he was in the beginning to someone Julia should love.
