December to Dismember: RED CHRISTMAS (2016)

I realize that it is traditional for us here at VJ to be beaten to a bloody pulp by awful movies during the Christmas season, but we always have a glimmer of hope that maybe, perhaps, possibly this year, one will actually turn out to be... I dunno, good. I mean, it could happen, right? Yeah, just like it could happen where that one person in your family won't get drunk and start yelling expletives at selected other members of your family, like they do every year. You can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which gets full first. Once again, my child-like innocence  is shattered like a Panzer tank running over a tree ornament and adding insult to injury, this time the Aussies are to blame.

Opening with a slow-mo, sad strings-laden, right-wing protest of an abortion clinic, a some random, sad-faced dude with a rosary fishes a live, almost full-term aborted baby out of a paint bucket that has been callously shoved into a corner by a nurse's foot. Once he has saved the baby (without any one of a dozen people noticing), he blows the place up while the soundtrack has news bytes of reporters commenting on the awful clinic. Don't you hate starting a movie and 10 minutes in wondering if you should just do yourself a favor and just go do laundry instead?

Picking up years later, single mother of four (who can apparently afford a massive estate house), mostly grown, but definitely not adult, kids, Diane (Dee Wallace), is planning a lavish Christmas celebration for the family. We have son Jerry (Gerard Odwyer), an autistic young man who is obsessed with Shakespeare; daughter Suzy (Sarah Bishop) who is married to a priest, Peter (David Collins); pregnant daughter Ginny (Janis McGavin) and her man-child husband, or boyfriend, Scott (Bjorn Stewart); adopted daughter and pretentious modern artist Hope (Deelia Meriel) and uhhhh, some dude named Joe (Geoff Morrell). We never find out who the hell Joe is - maybe he is an uncle since he's the only other American, aside from Wallace, in the cast of Australians. Maybe it doesn't really matter because you will learn to hate them all.

Possibly echoing first time feature writer/director Craig Anderson's own personal issues, family members can't even manage to stay civil to each other long enough to get their asses in seats. After pregnant Ginny snipes at infertile Suzy about her inability to get knocked up, Ginny and Scott take off to the laundry room to have loud sex, which nobody really seems to mind, except for priest Peter, who tries to get a good eyeful through the keyhole much to everyone's amusement. Yeah, this family is not only unlikable, they aren't even human.

In the middle of a massive tantrum session where the rotten brats are yelling at mom about how mad they are that she's selling the house and taking a vacation, a shambling, slow-talking bulk wrapped in bandages and wearing a black, hooded cloak, knocks on the the door. It's Christmas, so in spite of the fact that he is weird, smells of urine and claims that he wears the bandages to "keep his skin on", they sit him right down in the middle of their family issues. Honestly, I feel kind of sorry for this underprivileged shlub having to put up with these entitled jerks. After giving him a Christmas gift of a mason jar filled with peanuts in the shell, they find out that his name is Cletus and that all he wants to do is to read a letter he wrote to his mother. We are now at about the 25 minute mark and if you still give a crap what happens next, you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

The very long, rambling letter tells of Cletus' love for his mother who disposed of him at birth and included enough unsavory details for this group of assclowns to literally throw him out of the house and turn on Diane, who clearly had a secret that she kept from them all these years. Brother, if you thought there was family drama going down before, just wait for the freak-out now. Yes, Cletus is in fact Diane's aborted Down's Syndrome baby from the beginning of the movie. Her excuse is that her husband was dying and she didn't want to bring another baby into the world. Why she decided to wait until right before giving birth to have him dumped in a bucket, we don't know. What we do know is that daughters who have big screaming matches with their mothers, complete with slapped faces, promptly all go hang out in bed together. As far as I know, this is true.

After some random shots of Cletus wandering around wailing about his mother, we get right back to Bitch Central. Ginny and Scott, feeling self-satisfied after their obnoxious liaison, go outside to smoke some pot, which again, bothers nobody, not even Diane. Ok, even assuming you are a progressive, ex-hippy type that somehow managed to become rich and never turned into a conservative nutbag, your daughter is pregnant! Jeezus, maybe if you laid the smack down on 'em every once in a while, I wouldn't be so desperate to see them all horribly murdered. Sadly, the murders are "horrible", just not in the way you would like them to be.

So now, after all this mama drama, you'd think that would be enough and we could get on with the mindless killing. And you'd be almost right. Craig Anderson isn't letting you off the hook that easily though, he's got more personal issues to work out and by god, you will be a witness to them! Dinner is served in slo-motion with emotional strings on the soundtrack (seriously) and lots of fighting and arguing. Following a mind-numbingly extended argument over whether certain left-overs should be refrigerated or not (yes, pies topped with meringue need to go in the fridge - it's raw egg whites, you morons!), Cletus splits Hope in half while she is looking at the remains of Cletus' Christmas gift on the lawn. Don't get excited, you don't see too much other than a quick flash of CGI. Anderson decides instead to focus on a bare foot artfully laying artfully next to the jar of peanuts, rather than investing his pennies into some practical effects work. Laying by Hope's unseen body is a page ripped from a bible. A page from the Bible has about a dozen passages on it, but for some reason Diane and Joe know exactly which passage the killer meant for them to read. In the middle of a panic attack over the presumably grisly death of a girl, they immediately find and read aloud, "when justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers." Maybe Cletus had a hi-lighter marker on him and outlined the passage off camera, before leaving it next to the body.

Hope's death leads to a lot of screaming, running around and, yes, the dreaded shaky-cam. C'mon now, the shaky-cam is like found footage and blue tinting. Even in 2016, aren't we all totally the fuck over that? This is actually how the rest of the movie plays out. The idiots in the house keep on finding reasons to leave the house and promptly get themselves killed in boring ways. At one point Cletus manages to teleport into the house to kill one person in a room and then teleports out again so that he can wait for morons to leave the house again! At one point Diane sees him trying to climb up a trellis to get in a window. Her solution to that problem is to take the shotgun that they have lying around and blow his head off. Ha! I kid, I kid. No, her solution is to ignore the shotgun and run out side and use (I am not making this up) a boat anchor with attached chain to break all of the mansions many, many trellis'. The boat anchor is significant, not because they have an attached boat house (they are land-locked) or maybe a nautical theme (they have bear traps as decorations), nope it's just there because when Diane semi-aborted Cletus, she had a anchor necklace in her hand. Yep, seriously, that's it. Are you feeling my pain yet?

Like seemingly every goddamn indy horror flick these days, RED CHRISTMAS was the darling of many horror websites and blogs. That is until everyone actually saw it. Then it got ditched like Kevin Hart's Twitter feed. It is possible to make a horror movie set entirely in a house, it's been done many, many times before, but it takes more than just having a bunch of people be completely obnoxious. If you aren't capable of writing some decent characters and dialogue, no problem. Throw in an evil book, an evil doll, an evil puzzle box, an evil ghost, a homicidal offspring who is being kept under lock and key, the reanimated remains of an evil scientist's experiment in cobbling together body parts, something! Anything! I can be around actual people who are jerks any day of the week, why would I want to watch a movie about them?

Even worse, the pathetic attempts at heart tugging tragedy are grueling to sit through. At one point Jerry overhears Cletus telling Peter about how he was aborted because he was autistic. This causes Jerry to cry and confront his mother with the shotgun screaming and crying about whether she really loves him or would have preferred to have him aborted. To paraphrase the Bard, "what piece of work is this movie". Ironically, as much a I found this crap unbearable, Jerry's obsession with Shakespeare would have made for an interesting, possibly even enjoyable, character in a totally different movie. As would the (fumbling) attempt to make a Shakespearean slasher film. They are the few halfway decent ideas that this movie has to offer, and are just discarded, like (if this movie is to be believed) all the fully formed babies at an abortion clinic.

Amazingly, Craig Anderson has tried to pretend that this film has no sociopolitical message and that his ham-fisted scenes of completely unrealistic, insensitive depictions of abortion clinics that fall right in line with right-wing fanaticism, is completely incidental and unintentional. Pull the other one Craig, it plays Jingle Bells. Anderson has had a little bit of a career producing Australian TV shows and short films, which clearly hasn't lent him the skills to make a low-budget horror movie. It also hasn't lent him the skills to even interview veteran genre actor Dee Wallace. The entire interview is actually out of focus and even with an apology tacked on, it's pretty damn embarrassing.

As if the script wasn't bad enough, the shaky-cam and hacksaw editing make it difficult to even tell what is happening at times. There is a scene where someone is hit by Cletus who is driving away from the house in what I am assuming is one of their cars. Because of the camera and editing, we have no idea who that person was until later when we see one of the cast limping! The kills are poorly executed as well. There is a scene where Peter has a long prayer session with Cletus before stabbing him with a knife. This, understandably, irritates the hell out of Cletus so he throws Peter up on the kitchen counter and pushes his head on to a spinning blender blade until Peter's CGI eyes go all googly and jets of blood shoot out of his eye sockets. That's pretty much the most graphic effect too, aside from a cop who suddenly and inexplicably, finds himself with a bear trap over his head, snapped tight around his neck, which sprays blood everywhere but for some reason doesn't prevent him from doing a lot of screaming. Presumably in an effort to avoid "unnecessary" expense, in one scene a girl is bloodlessly CGI stabbed through the head with an umbrella, we cut to a shot of the top of the umbrella opening up, popping loose some pink bits in the corner of the frame. Not even a reveal shot of the corpse. Maybe Dee Wallace's fee was the price we pay for this. Not that it matters anyway. There is zero fun to be had here.

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December to Dismember: MASSACRE ON AISLE 12 (2016)

Dang, it was starting to look like a black Christmas as we were 0 for 4 in terms of recent holiday horrors. Straight trash like ELVES and MOTHER KRAMPUS 2: SLAY RIDE had us curled up in the corner of our respective homes, frantically rocking and repeating over and over “it’s only a terrible movie...it’s only a terrible movie…” But these digital potholes actually served a purpose. Much like a car needs recalibration and alignment after rough roads, these films helped us course correct and see the road more clearly. Sure we were still swerving all over the place, but we at least could now appreciate a section of the road where the folks actually put some effort. And so the low budget horror-comedy MASSACRE ON AISLE 12 shines in our glazed eyes by actually giving a damn.

The film opens with affable Dave (Michael Buonomo) showing up for his first day at Mr. Beaver's Hardware Store. As he enters the break room, Dave sees a report on the television about an armored car robbery that was done by the Santa’s Hat bandits. Obviously this will be important information. Dave is shown the ropes by assistant manager Jack (Chad Ridgely), who is introduced smashing a baseball bat against a vending machine to get his beloved fritter. “This vending machine is like my ex-wife. Took all my money and didn’t give me any pie,” Jack remarks. That will let you know the level this film is playing at. Dave is quickly introduced to a cavalcade of goofy characters that include pill popping Tara (Melissa Saint-Amand); Black Jack (Aikido Burgess), the surly black guy always writing in his notebook; Otto (Jim Klock), the nutzo war veteran; Mr. Kipper (Doug Burch), the manager who always wants to measure Dave’s inseam; Pharms (Mike Capozzi), the resident drug dealer who creates marijuana strain in the attic; and the store Santa (William Mark McCullough) and his scantily-clad assistant Barbie (Amber Jean).

It is Christmas Eve so things are pretty dead...and they are about to get deader. While four guys are trying to move a rather heavy box, they unlock it and find a dead guy inside. Not only is he dead, but he is holding onto bag filled with tens of thousands of dollars. Obviously he is one of the robbers, but no one knows how he got in there. Or do they? With lots of dollars at stake, the situation devolves into chaos rather quickly. Jack thinks they should keep and split the money, while Black Jack thinks they should notify the authorities. The disagreement ends with Black Jack punching White Jack, which pushes the latter over the edge. He breaks all of their cell phones (in a nice move by the writers they have the manager demand they are in his office while working), smokes some of Pharms’ tainted stash, and barricades all of the doors.

The events go south (souther?) almost immediately while the group is voting about what to do with the money. Jack returns with a crossbow and accidentally shoots Otto with it. This starts of a funny recurring gag where everyone accidentally smashes, beats, stabs and maims the helpless Otto throughout the film. Proving he is on the naughty list, Santa grabs the crossbow and orders Barbie to grab the loot. Unfortunately for him, a dye pack explodes in his face and sends him back to get impaled on some gardening equipment. Others start dropping like flies as Barbie gets electrocuted and Pharms gets shot dead after Mr. Kipper absconds with the bag and tries to escape through the ventilation shafts. Dave, Tara and Black Jack reluctantly team up to find and stop Mr. Kipper all the while the deranged Jack is stalking everyone because he wants the money and his revenge too.

Jeez, why is it easier for me to write 2000 words about a film I hated versus one I enjoyed? Shot in Georgia, MASSACRE ON AISLE 12 was a pleasant surprise. Now let me preface that by saying this is a low budget feature, so anyone expecting something on the technical level of a Hollywood Will Ferrell comedy will be sorely disappointed. Actually, this is quite different than a Ferrell comedy because it is actually funny. The credited writers are co-lead Ridgely and A.J. Via and they fill the script with funny, if often crude, jokes. I’m sure they watched BAD SANTA (2003) a bit as there are lots of “fucks” thrown about and nearly every stereotype is thrown out there. The funniest joke, however, for me was probably the cleanest one. It arrived toward the end where Mr. Kipper is about to be crushed by an elevator by Jack.

Jack: Bye, Mr. Kipper. Merry Christmas!

Mr. Kipper (whispering): There’s something you should know.

Jack: Yes?

Mr. Kipper: Corporate prefers you say “Happy holidays!”

So, yeah, that gag alone gets a thumbs up from me. Yeah, I’m easy, but it is hard not to be after the previous films you reviewed had people who couldn’t even remember their lines to deliver properly. The cast here is game and I can’t think of a bad one in the bunch. My personal favorites were Aikido Burgess as Black Jack and Ridgely as Psycho Jack. Ridgely reminds me of a combo of Bill Moseley and Mark Metcalf and is actually really funny in the role. I also appreciate that Ridgely and Via actually put some clever twists in their screenplay. The film resolves the “how did this dead guy get here” mystery rather easily and has a clever bit at the end showing the events might happen to a new group. If the film has any flaw, it is that co-directors Jim Klock and William Mark McCullough didn’t have a proper budget to pull it off fully. The hardware location is far from the antiseptic aisle presented on the DVD cover. I imagined how cool this would have been if the location looked like one of those sprawling big chain stores after hours. Also, the filmmaking style isn’t as zany as it could have been. If it had the wild early Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson/Alex Winter style, it could have been a hands down Christmas classic. In the end though MASSACRE ON AISLE 12 was amusing enough to be the lone (so far) light on our 2018 journey through Christmas films. The cast and filmmakers were game and you can appreciate the effort. Sometimes all it takes are the little things like a fun plot and a camera operator who knows how to keep things in focus. Like I said, I’m easy.

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December to Dismember: SECRET SANTA (2015)

Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a bit too stringent with modern low-budget horror films. They are so easy to make, these days, and require so little money to produce, that every douchebag who thinks they are hilarious while doing shots with their asshole friends (see 2018's MOTHER KRAMPUS 2), can crank out a "horror" movie and actually make a couple bucks doing it. Wading, nostril-deep though these movies can make one pretty cynical, so when something comes along that is just shy of the mark, it makes it all the more painful.

Decidedly falling into the category of "a group of college friends make a movie", SECRET SANTA (not to be confused with the forthcoming film from Adam Markus of 1993s JASON GOES TO HELL), has trouble hitting the mark, but gets lots of points for trying.

A couple of college girls, Jenny and Clarissa (Keegan Chambers) come home early from the bars. Since Clarissa is chundering drunk, Jenny dumps her on the floor and goes to her room to find a secret Santa gift on her bed. Opening it to find a filthy, well-used power drill, she opens her door and shouts "whoever is screwing with me, it's 10pm on a Friday and I'm sober, so I am not in the mood!" Finally, someone has written a character that my college-age self can relate to. After taking a shower, because that's what girls do, she returns to her bedroom where the gift giver turns out to be a black clad, balaclava-wearing nutbar who proves to her that the drill, while dirty, is in fine working order by drilling out her eye. Damn, I was just starting to like her.

Fortunately for the viewer, as well as the killer, this appears to be a sorority house of sorts, except it is completely free of obnoxious Greek letters. So I guess it's just a house with a bunch of girls in it.

Cute and peppy Nicole (Annette Wozniak) in order to pay for her school tuition, has a sideline business involving lingerie, large vegetables and a web-cam. Her boyfriend Bryan (Brent Baird), is completely unaware of this as he is totally devoted to her. Well, aside from that one night with Clarissa, of course. There is also Liv (Nicole Kawalez), who is secretly dating Professor Ramsey (Tony Nashed), who is supposed to be significantly older, but is pretty much the same age. They plan on announcing their copulation-ritual bonding at a Christmas party that the girls are having at the house later on that night where they will do the old secret Santa thing. Ramsey is briefly flagged as a potential killer as he has a secret Santa gift in his drawer. One of a few weak attempts at throwing out some red herrings. There is also the hyper-active Dwayne (Geoff Almond), who doesn't study for tests, drinks lots of coffee and snorts white powder leading to comically erratic behavior. Surprisingly, he's not as annoying as he sounds.

Most of the running time of the movie is character pieces, such a Dwayne getting wired and sitting down to cram for the next day's test. Of course everything that can go wrong does and he ends up totally unprepared and tweaking in class, at one point hallucinating that Nicole's face is contorting like a bad Blumhouse horror movie. This finally leads us to the lame Christmas party in which Liv makes hors d'oeuvres out of Nicole's erm, used vegetables and we get lots of awkward silence after Liv's new BF and everyone's teacher, Ramsey, shows up. While the movie cruises along amiably enough on the cast's likability and some fun throw-away jokes, once your jokes turn into a '90s "Saturday Night Live" sketch in which everyone sits around in uncomfortable silence, my holiday generosity starts heading for the door. If I want to watch a movie that has long moments of silence, I'll watch a creepy Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie, thankyouverymuch.

In addition to bringing the movie to a screeching halt, this silent night plays with the awkwardness of Liv's new boyfriend being not only everyone's professor, but significantly older and a big fan of tweed sports jackets with elbow patches. While the role was clearly written with someone like Martin Mull in mind, what we get is a guy who is pretty much the same age as Liv and is very clearly not the stiff, whitebread type. Making things worse is the fact that Nashed seems even more lost in the role than his character. This really hurts the film's latter half, but the most glaring problem is... c'mon, everyone say it with me: "I thought this was a horror movie!?"

While written and directed by one man, Mike McMurran, the film is about a schizophrenic as they come. The majority of the movie is a rather enjoyable, low-budget college student comedy. Occasionally, first timer McMurran suddenly remembers he's trying to sell a horror movie and throws in some jarringly out of context gore sequences that I think he might be trying to play for laughs. Annoyingly he also feels that the whole thing needs to have the faux-grindhouse video filter with fake scratches, lab-marks and faded color. Personally I find this a major drawback on a horror film, but on a movie that is essentially a light comedy, featuring modern technology like cell phones and laptops, it's just absurd.

We do get a slasher film in the more traditional sense, clumsily shoehorned into the ass-end of the movie, however. People start opening secret Santa presents finding odd household tools and are killed with them. In one scene we get a little comedy when Clarissa attempts to seduce Dwayne out of sheer boredom and after discovering that doing massive amounts of stimulants *ahem* restricts male bloodflow, decides to take a bath (because that's what girls do). The killer who, amazingly is unseen or heard by anyone in the house at any time, had previously given her a hairdryer. Cackling maniacally, he throws it in the tub. Or he would have, if the cord hadn't been so short that it drops harmlessly on the floor. Having to resort to doing things the old fashioned way, he then clubs her to death with it. The old too-short-powercord gag is not a new joke, by far (it was even used in the porn slasher parody CAMP CUDDLY PINES POWERTOOL MASSACRE, back in 2005), and it's a fitting metaphor for this part of the movie as the joke falls short and the punchline is rather blunt.

The effects are occasionally executed with simple prosthetics, but typically we just get gallons of red Kayro syrup being splashed all over the place. While McMurran tries to keep the audience guessing as to who the killer is, it is all rather half-hearted, and the reveal isn't very interesting and is obnoxiously over-acted. It seems like yet again, this Christmas, we have another movie that really doesn't want to be a horror movie. In an unusual turn of events, I rather liked their oddball group of college students who, for once, actually seem like people I knew in college, instead of the idealized, hyperbolic, 25 year old college students we see in bigger budgeted slasher movies. Also, because it is a Canadian movie, there is actually snow in the exterior shots. As a Californian, I frequently don't even notice when a Christmas movie lacks snowy vistas, but I always appreciate it when they do. It's a free special effect and adds immeasurably to the ambiance. Imagine GHOST KEEPER (1981) without the powder; you'd just have some people lost in a house on some grass.

Hopefully McMurran can find his groove, I think he has potential to make a solid movie. Even, maybe especially, if it is just a comedy and not trying to be a horror film.

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December to Dismember: ELVES (2018)

It was approximately a year ago that some dumb ass (yours truly) got hypnotized by the awesome cover for THE ELF (2017), which ultimately led to a love-hate affair with Redbox rejects. I just wanted a good ol’ Christmas horror movie. What I got was a horrible Christmas movie. High off the cash pilfered $1.75 at a time, Redbox quickly got a sequel from Justin Price’s Pikchure Zero Entertainment out just in time for this year’s holiday season. Now THE ELF was truly an abomination against filmmaking and I can’t imagine something being worse. “Hold my eggnog,” said the production company. Just as the titular creature multiplied, ELVES has somehow expanded on all the errors and ways to make a movie unbearable.

We open in the same small Texas town of Alton (I know this because of the end credits, not due to any filmmaker insight of establishing locations) as two young boys dig through a box of Christmas stuff. One of them hears a noise and goes to investigate in a bedroom, where he discovers a variation of the elf doll from the first film. It apparently possesses him and makes him put his younger brother in the oven. Lucky kid, out of the film by the five minute mark. We then cut to a title sequence so drawn out with every actor in the film listed that even Charles Band would complain of it being flagrant padding for length.

The main story kicks in on December 21st with a bunch of friends having a party in a dilapidated warehouse where they just sit around in lawn chairs. Apparently they are all there to celebrate Clover (Deanna Grace Congo), who one man toasts as being a “local hero, activist and lifesaver.” Now what this praise is in relation to is anyone’s guess because plot details are not a strong point for Pikchure Zero Entertainment (more on that in a bit). After plaudits are exchanged and liquor shots downed, Chance (Norma Mendiola) decides to introduce her friends to the “Naughty List” game that involves the creepy elf doll from the opening. According to the rules, you put your name on the list and “once upon the list, the only way to survive is to do what the elf tells you.” Wow, sounds like a real fun game. First on the list is Cali (Melissa Vega), who sees the elf magically appear in her hands. This amazing bit of cinema is accomplished by her holding the elf doll in her hands, pulling it up into the frame, acting shocked, and going, “Who put this here?” Yes, the same trick you did with your friends when you made movies with a video camera when you were twelve. We cut to the next morning and Cali is dropping Clover and Leah (Stephanie Marie Baggett) off. Apparently the curse has really weighed on her as she says, “I’m just ready for this to be over.” You and me both, guuuuurl! The elf shows up in her backseat, causes her to grin evilly, and hit a guy with her car.

Next up we have Randy (Loren James Haskins) working at a bar where the elf shows up on a shelf with a note telling him to poison a customer. This freaks him out so he meets three friends at the library, where they watch a news video stating Cali killed herself in a crash after driving over that guy (who, as the film reveals, had killed her younger brother in a hit-and-run last year). This leads to one of many dialogue scenes that had me questioning my sanity.

Clover: I got a text right before it happened.

Randy: What did it say?

Clover: I don’t know, I guess around 8.

WHAT? Oh, just wait my dear friends. It’s going to get loopier. Apparently the group becomes concerned for Tiffany (Erika Martinez) as she is next on the list and Clover gives her a call. Too late as the elf is in her house now and makes her snort a bunch of drugs in front of her mom. She survives her overdose and, later surrounded by friends, she wakes and asks, “Am I dead?” to which Clover responds, “Not yet.” Uh, thanks? The friends decide they need to have a big group talk where they relay their information and how it is similar to films like TRUTH OR DARE (2018) or IT FOLLOWS (2014). No better way to establish your pedigree than to have characters name films that are muuuuch better than what they are watching. Hey, at least I know someone who had a hand in this mess watches movies.

Okay, so far, so tedious. But this has been pretty normal stuff so it is time to shake up things as only Pikchure can. We randomly cut to three goth girls sitting in a pentagram with the original elf doll from the first film. They are doing some ritual and it causes one girl to stick a barbeque fork in her neck to end her life (oh how I envy her!) and the red-headed goth beats the other girl to death. Now, sit down for this, the killer girl is Sky (Amy Jo Guthrie), the goth best friend from the first film. So, yes, we finally have a connection between films outside of location. Now how do I know this? Well, because I recognized her and saw the character name in the end credits. Yes, once again, the film steadfastly refuses to establish trivial things like character names. Still with me? Good cuz I’m gonna lose your ass. We then meet a random guy out in a snowstorm who is having car trouble. He finds a Christmas ball in his car seat and then is killed by someone wearing a Krampus mask in his backseat. Wait, who the heck is this killer? Who is this guy? Who am I? What the hell is going on? As much as I hate to resort to posting a meme, this is wholly appropriate:

With their friends dropping like plot points in the script, Clover and Leah decide they need to investigate. They go to visit Chance and she fills them in on the history of the elf before shooting herself in the head. Smart lady. Our investigative duo then visit an “old” lady named Clara for more info about this curse. Wait...who the hell is Clara? No idea as the filmmakers never bother to establish who she is. Okay, if my talk of dumb dialogue has gotten you all worked up, get ready because we are about to reach the peak. I present the mother of all nonsensical exposition exchanges I’ve EVER encountered in any movie. This is Clara explaining why the elves do what they do.

Clara: The biblical Magi. They’re also referred as [SIC] the Three Wise Men or Three Kings. They were in the Gospel of Matthew or traditional Christian ideals. There’s a group of distinguished foreigners that visited Jesus after his birth bearing gifts. I don’t know, the Gospel of Matthew was the only one out of the four chronicled gospels to mention the Magi. See, Matthew reports that they came from the East to worship the King of the Jews. The gospel never mentions the number of Magi. But the Western Christian denominations, they just traditionally assumed them to be three.

Leah: The Three Wise Men, yes. What does this have to do with the elf?

Clara: Only a number because of the statement that they brought three gifts. But the Enochian translation it was seven. Psalm 72, Chapter 11. May all kings fall down before him.

Clover: Why seven?

Clara: Pride. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth. All of them major sins, but also virtues.

Leah: You mean that there are seven of these things? These elves.

Clara: Just two.

Seven deadly sins, two elves, many confused viewers. Now as if my brain wasn’t scrambled enough, this scene ends with the “old” lady - who looks to be in her thirties- pointing toward a wall that she has a “Class of 2016” mural on and Leah goes, “Oh...my...God! She’s only 20.” Now I can take from the reactions of the folks on screen and music that this reveal is supposed to be a shocking moment. It is only shocking in the sense that I have no idea what is going on.

To add to the building confusion, we then see Sky and the original elf kill four people who are in a Christmas support group called Santa’s Helpers. Don’t get too excited for an elf attack as this just involves Sky throwing it to a person, them catching it and then holding it to their neck while they scream. We then see the Krampus killer again as they beat Tiffany to death with a plastic tree (!) and then stalk and kill John (who?) in the library. Finally, the two plotlines converge when Clover and Leah are just randomly sitting in a car and Sky randomly jumps in the backseat with a gun and forces them to drive to her apartment. It is here she has the elf’s chest, reveals something about the elf causing a hunt, and is quickly shot dead; presumably because someone asked her “why are you doing this?” and that was too tough a choice for the filmmakers. It is then revealed that Clover was the Christmas killer all along and...fuck it, where are my keys? I need to get this shit out of my house and back in the Redbox ASAP!

Okay, I’m officially gone, lost, no bars, service unavailable. I’ll be honest, this movie might be one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. If you know my viewing habits, that is a bold statement. How bad is it? The Dan Haggerty ELVES (1989) is now not the worst movie with that title. This is not a movie, it is a flagrant attack on all things cinema. It is actually funny the film has a fleeting plot point about the seven deadly sins because I went through the seven stages of grief with this sumbitch. Actually, I might be stuck in the anger stage as I’m still fuming over how awful this is and how it could get made. Now THE ELF was truly terrible stuff, but even its muddled storytelling could be forcibly mapped out. No chance with ELVES as debuting director Jamaal Burden (which may or may not be a pseudonym for Justin Price) fails even the most rudimentary elements of film storytelling. Burden obviously wanted to live up to his last name as it is up to viewers to suss out who these characters are and what motivations they might have (if any). And trust me, that is hard work! For example, the kids at the party may have been celebrating Clover helping capturing a killer named The Holiday Reaper (which, in turn, may or may not be the Krampus masked killer). Now I know this information not from the film itself, but by reading the film’s press release. Yes, the filmmakers can’t be bothered to include dialogue as to just why their hero is heroic. Echoing the ineptness in the direction and scripting, one has to marvel at the technical aspects of the film. We have some of the worst CGI to grace my screen in a long time complete with terrible CGI blood (see pic above) and this time they don’t even bother to animate the title creatures. We also get plenty of moments of camera accidents. My personal favorite was a moment during the meeting with Carla where the camera suddenly tilts down and they left it in the film.

Another example of the film’s boneheaded-ness is in the special features on the disc. There is an interview with lead and co-producer Deanna Grace Congo. She seems likeable enough and you can’t discount her enthusiasm. Now here is the interesting thing - Congo mentions she is a magician and performs some cool sleight of hand tricks. Now think about this for a second - they have someone capable of doing something cool...and never once think to try and find some way to work this into their scenario! Doubly criminal since Congo was a co-producer. How can you not choose to work in something that could only be an asset? Even if it was a throwaway gag at their party, it might be something to get viewers involved. Nope! We will have nothing interesting in our film. ELVES is a true abomination: A film made by rank amateurs and shoved out onto the market by a cynical company with all the love and care of a disgruntled Santa’s little helper on that toy assembly line in the last five minutes of their final day. I’m not a religious man by any means, but rumor on the street is God hit up the filmmakers after finding out about this end credit shoutout and asked for them to keep him out of it.

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