Holiday Hell

Just another sup-par horror outing. As dbrown alluded to in his review, some very bad dialogue. Just really not much to see or hear.

I watch movies so often that I'm running out of options and often look for new stuff on streaming apps like Netflix, Tubi, Crackle, Hulu, ect... Anyways, I don't understand people's ratings. I just watched Last American Horror Show on Tubi, and it was flat out TERRIBLE! How does that have a 6 and yet Holiday Hell is in the 3ish range? I must be watching something different than these people? Perhaps I'm partial, because anything with Jeffrey Combs gets an automatic 5 or above... Sure, this is low budget, but at least there is some work put in. I say it's a fun little anthology that doesn't look like a student project as some others do. Plenty people love Tales From The Crypt (including me), so I don't see how this is so different other than the lack of comic drawings and skeleton host. There is dark humor, the tales revolve around twisted morality, cheesiness, and some naked breasts. That's the good ol' formula for horror anthology to me.

Holiday Hell (2019) is another holiday gem I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a morbid shop keeper closing up for the night on Christmas Eve when a persistent shopper comes in to buy a girl for her sister. As the shopper finds various interesting things in his store, the shop keeper tells her the short story behind the item and he how he acquired it.

This movie was created by four directors and stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), Jeffrey Arrington (All Too Human), Mandy Baker (The Alliance), Lisa Carswell (Z Nation), Lisa Coronado (Z Nation) and Forrest Campbell (Mr. Bleachers).

Jeffrey Combs was awesome in this from beginning to end with great narrations, storytelling and as an overall performance. As with any short story anthology some are better than others. The first story with the mask wasn't that great, the second story with the doll was pretty good, the Santa storyline was awesome and the final story wraps up the movie perfectly. There's inconsistent gore in these but the better stories obviously have the better kills.

Overall this is far from a classic but a worthwhile holiday horror short story anthology. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it at least once.

This low-budget, indie horror film has some genuinely impressive filmmaking in it. I'm not a horror aficionado, but I know the tropes and these film-makers clearly have had some fun playing with them. Yes, there's some questionable dialogue, and the "don't go into the basement" (in a suburban split-level, ha-ha!) moments are schlocky, but there's definitely thought put into this, and some admirable and hilarious twists. As in many indies, the acting is a bit uneven, however, there are notable exceptions, and Joel Murray's performance is outstanding, by turns poignant, funny, terrifying. Jeffrey Combs is perfect as the smarmy owner of a creepy little shop of horror stories. And a special shout-out to Meaghan Karimi-Naser as the young woman seeking a last-minute gift for her sister. Karimi-Naser plays the slightly-too-innocent/what's-going-on-underneath role with wonderfully hinted-at layers. There's also a fantastic pay-off to her performance. (Whatever you do-stay for the last frame. You may know something's coming, but I promise, you are not going to guess the exact form it takes!) I hope to see more films by this group of indie filmmakers.

I think a 12 year old boy wrote this! It's really stupid and NO ONE talks like that! It's so bad, I can't tell if the stories are even good! 2 thumbs down! 👎🏼👎🏼