In total, the movie tackles eight holidays: Valentine's Day, written & directed by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer (of Starry Eyes [2014 / trailer] and the Pet Sematary remake [2019 / trailer]); St Patrick's Day, written & directed by Gary Shore (of the massively disappointing Dracula Untold [2014 / trailer] — really, brownface in 2014? — and The Haunting of Queen Mary [2023 / trailer]); Easter, written & directed by Nicholas McCarthy (of The Pact [2012 / trailer] and At the Devil's Door [2014 / trailer]); Mother's Day, written & directed by Sarah Adina Smith (of Goodbye World [2013 / trailer] and Buster's Mal Heart [2017 / trailer]; Father's Day, written & directed by Anthony Scott Burns (of Our House [2018 / trailer]); Halloween, written & directed by Kevin Smith (of Dogma [1999 / trailer], Red State [2011 / trailer], Tusk [2014 / trailer] and more); Christmas, written & directed by Scott Stewart (of Priest [2011 / trailer] and Dark Skies [2013 / trailer]), and New Year's Eve, written by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer, but directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer (of Daniel Isn't Real [2019 / trailer] and Some Kind of Hate [2015 / trailer]).
Trailer to
Holidays:
Among the flaws of most anthology films is that the quality of the various tales is often extremely variable, and the general speed at which the interludes are told often results in rushed narratives. Holidays manages to shine in that the direction of all segments is universally strong and fluid, and most of the narratives, despite the rush in which they are told and the often overly conscious desire for an O. Henry (or, if you prefer, EC Comics) twist at the end, are decent to excellent. In regards to the narratives, most are more snapshots of horror than fully resolved stories. As for the filmwork itself, in general, the various vignettes display a good eye for visuals and carry a decent punch on one level or another, so even the weakest episodes — for us, Christmas and Father's Day, as both had a whiff of over-familiarity to them — are at least watchable and not aggravating.
The short and sweet Valentine's Day sees a mobbed school-loser named Maxine (Madelein Coghlan of The Free Fall [2021 / trailer]), in her desire for giving the perfect Valentine's gift to her obvious crush, the heart-troubled Coach Rockwell (Rick Peters of Night of the Demons 2 [1994 / trailer]), taking revenge upon her biggest bully, Heidi (Savannah Kennick of Do Not Reply [2019 / trailer]). The slightly uneven tone keeps the whole narrative a little off-kilter, but also helps make the final shot all the more effective. If we have a quibble, it would only be that it is hard to believe that the [male] school PE coach, in our contemporary world, whether out of just sympathy or any other reason, would take the risk of giving only one young [female] student a Valentine's Day card. (The day and age when that would be seen as an innocent action are long gone.)
St Patrick's Day is perhaps the most fully developed narrative of the eight; strange, dryly humorous and disturbing, it tells of a childless teacher named Elizabeth (Ruth Bradley of Grabbers [2012]) who is given the "gift" of her greatest desire by student, a creepy little girl named Grainne (an excellent Isolt McCaffrey of The Cured [2017 / trailer]). Ruth Bradley does a nuanced job as a woman whose desire to have a child precludes the termination of even a snake baby, and it has a great vomiting scene, not to mention some off-kilter dialogue, but its resolution is slightly undone by the fake-looking offspring.
Easter is definitely the most extreme of the tales, a short that is less a full narrative than an exercise in Christian-based grotesquery. Peppered with barely perceivable asides (notice how the mother follows her nightly prayers by tickling her fancy?), we see a young girl whose Doubting-Thomas inability to coalesce the Christian (Jesus' alleged resurrection) with the pagan (the Easter Bunny) results in the appearance of a magical Easter Egg whence comes an Easter Jesus Bunny that, among other things, births fluffy little chicks through its stigmata. At times scary, at times simply crass, the short filmic interludes veers towards the extreme and satisfies less by it narrative than by its memorable and disturbing scenes.
Mother's Day, like St Patrick's Day, is of the pregnancy-horror school. A serially aborting woman (Sophie Traub of Tenderness [2019 / trailer]) who gets pregnant every time she has sex, no matter what precautions she takes — that alone is already a horror story — seeks emotional support, if not a solution, at a women's weekend getaway. Unluckily, the group of women proves to be a coven of witches, and her fertility is a "gateway". After a drug-induced orgy during which she impregnated by Montezuma (played by the hot, muscular, and occasionally hirsute gay porn actor Jared Degado* — below, not from the film — but voiced by the likely not hot, muscular, or occasionally hirsute Manuel Bermudez), she is kept drugged and hostage as something gestates within her... An episode that may possibly to speak to women more than most men, perhaps because everything in the short is so much closer to the bone for them.
* Although he still looks as if he swallows more steroids than sperm, Jared Michael Delgado, a [former?] "beefy bottom" also known as Vince Ferelli, born Jared Tarquini (1983-03-10), doesn't seem to have ever done a hardcore flick with a "real" plot, but he can easily be found in diverse steamy scenes and compilations. He briefly co-headed an independent horror movie production house, Muscle Wolf Productions, which wanted to specialize in (non-hardcore) muscular and bloody trash (see: Psycho Street [2011 / trailer]), but the firm seems to have died early. He can still found in commercials, in our dreams, and films like VooDoo (2017, with Lavelle Roby) and Ugly Sweater Party (2018 / trailer).
Dinner with the Dwyers:
For us, Father's Day was the weakest entry in the series, as it barrels relatively straight to an obvious conclusion. A woman, Carol (Scream Queen Jocelin Donahue of The Burrowers [2008], House of the Devil [2009 / trailer] and so much more), receives the unexpected gift of a tape recorder from her long-missing father and, following his instructions as recorded, heads for a what might be called a father-daughter reunion. Predictable, but visually tight, it is less a total failure than frustratingly banal.
Halloween is a Halloween tale only by dint of being set on the day; otherwise the narrative of the short, which will probably hit men closer to home than women, is arguably better suited for Labor Day. One might view the short as a "feminism at play" film, providing you share the half-baked Andrew Tate view of feminism (i.e., that the only thing feminists want to do is cut off men's balls). The singular male of the tale, a shaggy misogynist named Ian (Harley Morenstein of Dead Rising: Watchtower [2015 / trailer]) who runs a web-cam babe business, abuses his three web-cam girls once too often, thus incurring an employee uprising involving an electrical dildo, superglue, and his anus. Well-acted and shot, it is not a disservice to the anthology.
Christmas has nice touches and a good cast, and Seth Green (of Ticks [1993 / trailer] and Idle Hands [1999]) does a convincing job as a Joe Schmoe who puts the right present for his son ahead of helping someone in need. The segment is less horror than a science fiction-tinged thriller. Next to St Patrick's Day, it is the most fully encapsulated story, but it is also oddly ordinary and predictable and, ultimately, unsatisfying.
New Year's Eve ends the anthology collection on a strong note: simple and direct, it is both blackly comic and suspenseful. In short, an extremely repulsive serial killer (Andrew Bowen of DeCoteau's Pit and the Pendulum [2009 / trailer], The Conjurer [2008 / trailer] and Big Bad Wolf [2006 / trailer]) miscalculates when he goes on a New Year's Eve date with his next intended victim, an internet hookup (Lorenza Izzo of The Green Inferno [2013 / trailer] and Aftershock [2012 / trailer]).
Not only fans of anthology horror movies will find Holidays an entertaining foray into short horror. Never boring, Holidays doesn't pull any punches and never leaves you feeling bored. Even where a given story might be lacking, the direction and acting is on the ball, as all the entries are well made by people who obviously care for the craft of filmmaking, if not at least their project. Well worth watching.
Yes, it's real –
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