Movie Review: Holiday Hell (2019)
Holiday Hell is a holiday-themed indie horror anthology. The film is made up of four short stories based on different holidays. It starts off with a girl named Amelia (Meagan Karimi-Naser) walking into a shot full of oddities right before closing time looking for a gift for her sister, who is into weird things. The shop has plenty of that to offer. Everything from skulls, to wooden dolls, and everything in between. The shopkeeper, Thaddeus Rosemont, who is played by Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, The Frighteners) is on his way out of the shop but agrees to help her since it is almost Christmas and she says he is her last hope.
The shopkeeper explains to her that his shop is called “Never Told” because every item in his shop has a story that has never been told, and each item is significant and unique in that aspect. She starts browsing around and as she chooses items in the shop, the shopkeeper tells her the story behind them. This is one of those Anthologies in which all of the stories will contribute to the overall storyline, so while we can’t go into too much detail, we will give a quick synopsis of each story and our overall opinion of the anthology as a whole.
The first item that Amelia inquires about is a doll mask. The shopkeeper tells her the story of how this was found in a house fire in which people had died, but not all from the fire. The story is centered around some teenagers going to what was supposed to be an abandoned house to have a party on Valentine’s Day. We found this story to be alright. There were some really nice camera shots in it, but overall we thought it wasn’t very captivating. It also didn’t seem like much thought was put into the set design for this section.
Amelia decides that isn’t the gift she wants to go with and inquires next about a wooden doll that catches her eye. It’s a wooden doll that is a one-of-a-kind, centuries-old doll carved by a rabbi. He said he got it from some very distraught parents. The story is about some parents that are going out of town for a weekend but leave the son in the hands of a bad babysitter. They give him the doll as a Hanukkah gift before leaving. This was tied for our favorite story in the anthology. As most doll stories go in horror films, you can use your imagination to give you an idea as to what happens. The way they filmed this was excellent. It reminded us of a lot of the old-school Puppet Master films.
After hearing this story, Amelia just isn’t quite sold on the doll, and is looking around and notices a very peculiar Santa outfit that has a lot of bloodstains on it. The shopkeeper tells her this was given to him by a friend at the morgue, who sometimes brings him items for his shop. This was a close runner-up for us, and was about a guy in a loveless marriage who plays Santa at his company Christmas party, and is just really not having a good week. Some things go down at the company party, and Santa gets a bit out of hand. This was our other favorite and had some really funny parts. Some great writing in this one and good use of practical effects. Really enjoyable.
To wrap things up, the shopkeeper notices a ring that Amelia is wearing and swears he has seen it somewhere before. Amelia mentions that there is a story behind it and so begins the last story in the anthology, which we really enjoyed. It was a bit slow at first, but really comes around and wraps things up nicely.
Overall, Holiday Hell is a really good indie horror anthology. It has some great filmmaking throughout all of the stories, and the overarching story really ties things up nicely. We definitely enjoyed it and would recommend you add it to your holiday film marathons this year.
Holiday Hell is available as of 10/15/19 on Tubi to watch for free at this location: https://tubitv.com/movies/494239/holiday_hell and will also be available elsewhere on digital and VOD on November 5th from Uncork’d Entertainment.
