Monday, January 29, 2018

Red Christmas


I'm always up for a good holiday horror flick that ruins the spirit of Christmas. Well, for me personally, it makes things more festive and enjoyable. There are really great ones like Santa's Slay, Christmas Evil, Silent Night-Deadly Night and Rare Exports. Then there are ones on the opposite side of the spectrum which make you wish it was just the new year already. That's where Red Christmas comes in. I really wasn't expecting this offering to be great considering most of the reviews about this I read ending up being mostly on the negative side, but my Christmas horror taste had to be satisfied, so I decided to dive right into this one anyway. And man was I ready to drink when the closing credits started rolling. The only really great things I can muster about Red Christmas are that Dee Wallace's performance as the mother trying to keep her ridiculously fractured and dysfunctional family together for Christmas is absolutely top notch and some of the kills are fairly gory-although they employed CGI instead of the better looking practical effects. Other than that, getting hammered on some holiday nog would have been a much better experience than sitting through this for some lousy notes. Man, I guess I really do have to suffer for my art.

Abortion is a heavy subject. I'll just leave it at that.

Jerry is the highest functioning person with down syndrome I think I've ever seen.

What, are these two Christian snobs or something?

Spiking the punch. Yes sir.

What a shocker. The priest is a voyeuristic pervert.

I would react the same way if some assclown just started peeing on me.

  There's no way that anyone I didn't know would be allowed into my house during Christmas.

Enough family drama. Can I just see some people get killed already?

Well, wishes do come true. Now I have to go listen to "Chopped in Half" by Obituary.

 Plan B looks good right about now.

The final 40 minutes of Red Christmas ended up being an insane mess of lights, sounds, colors and some of the worst cinematography I think I've burned my retinas with in quite some time. Most of it was just people in the family running around and through the house trying to get away from Cletus as he offs them one by one in some of the most boring and cliched ways imaginable. Most of the editing and camera work during this period in the film is really jittery and jarring, and I mostly just ended up with a headache when it was finally over. Some of you probably dig Red Christmas, but I had a hard time swallowing this pill. I wanted some rib-eye. What I consumed instead was a very dry, flavorless pork chop that was over cooked and under seasoned. Better luck next time, Craig Anderson. I hope your next film is filleted to perfection.   
   

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