Holiday Hell (2019) Review
Holiday Hell (2019) Review
On Christmas Eve, a woman enters a curiosity shop looking for a last-minute gift. There, she meets a mysterious shopkeeper (Jeffrey Combs) who tells her the horrific stories behind four objects in the shop. As he weaves tales of killer dolls, witches and psycho Santas, the woman senses she might be in danger. She has until midnight to choose her gift, but will she choose wisely?
With a title like HOLIDAY HELL one could easily think that this film could be rush-released cash in on the recent situation for thousands of Thomas Cook customers. It’s not, although I imagine being stranded at an airport abroad could be equally as frustrating as sitting through this festive horror anthology.
Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs is the headline star. Combs is always good value (except for when his likeable screen presence is squandered in a risible Charles Band feature film) and he doesn’t disappoint here. It’s a shame that he’s there for the abridging tale only as someone of his knack for genre fare could have easily lifted the rest of this anthology above the squalid level of misery that it actually is.
HOLIDAY HELL is another case of see-it-all-before and that hampers this lacklustre flick even further. Why aren’t filmmakers trying anymore for a unique selling point rather than opt for the tried-and-tested. I’d rather watch an interesting failure than something that is dead on arrival. The variable acting quality and the rather languid pacing don’t help matters either. The film is set at Christmas and, aside from the occasional mention of the festive season, it never really FEELS like it’s set at Christmas, that may sound like an odd thing to say but never at any point do any of the sets display much colour or seasonal cheer.
Of the anthology’s segments The Hand that Rocks the Dreidel is the best of a bad bunch but again there’s nothing new here and the acting is rather poor. When something is this rotten you’d hope that it would be faster paced to get you through it seemingly quicker but alas it is more deliberately measured instead. Things happen with little sense or reason – for example, why would a bunch of cult members stay quietly unseen in the shadows and listen to a whole evening of natter between two people simply to pop out as a surprise at the end of the film? Perhaps I’m over-thinking things – if only there was as much thought going on behind the camera and we wouldn’t have something as tired and bland as this.
