All the Creatures Were Stirring:
Written and directed by David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry
This was not the movie we started the night out with. The movie I was originally trying to watch was something called Christmas Presence, a bizarre English slasher film with some of the most morally repugnant obnoxious characters you ever laid eyes on. You know perfect slasher movie fodder. For some reason or other, I couldn't bring myself to spend more than 7 minutes with them. It was too much for my psyche to bear. I turned it off and turned this movie on instead. An anthology movie with a Christmas theme to most of the stories. It had one of those posters that catches your eye right off the bat. What's this?! A tiny monster exiting a Christmas ornament like some kind of egg. Well alright then I'm on board.
Lies! All lies! No such thing exists in the entirety of the movie. It's like being in a video store back in the 90s searching through the horror movie section being bamboozled by the cover art. I sadly fell for it. I ventured into the community theater on Christmas Eve for what stories it may tell. None of the stories really had any impact. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be scared or laughing. I did laugh at it. So I'm going to assume that this is meant to be a comedy. It's funny in the way things play out in an oddly stilted way. I laughed at the stuff in the community theater a bunch. You go from the serious bloodshed portion to the same thing being reenacted by two actors on a blank stage in the most over the top way possible.
This was a very cheap looking movie. I don't mean just low budget. I mean cheap. This is a difference. This is a cheap looking movie. I guess they spent all their money on the poster. You could have spared some for some good camerawork. We could have used some of this money for some decent makeup effects. None of the stories were all that good. The first one was a mixture of the Belko Experiment and Saw. This type of story has been handled by better filmmakers. We didn't need a fan film version of this with a Christmas flavor. The second story about the demon keepers was too long. It had some okay elements and the demon creature had a great design. The one doing a low budget version of A Christmas Carol made me roll my eyes. The one with the aliens visiting on Christmas and doing a Christmas dinner with this guy and his girlfriend. It's sort of weird. All the stories are very weird but not engaging.
This is a very weak anthology movie. There is no story good enough to overcome the shabby structure. The poster is the best part of the movie. The rest of it was very meh. I can not recommend it. There are better Christmas related horror movies out there. I give it a D.
