The little treat featuring each of the biggest holidays of the year is composed of eight stories from different directors. Definitely one of the better horror anthologies to date.
Valentine’s Day
Director: Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer (Starry Eyes)
Score: four out of five Hershey’s kisses
A bullied outcast (not unlike in Carrie or The Craft) competes with the blonde popular girl for their swim teacher’s heart. Literally and figuratively. I tend to like a movie about obsessive love, and I really enjoyed this one. It’s memorable in a good way.
St. Patrick’s Day
Director: Gary Shore (Dracula Untold)
Score: three out of five snakeskin flasks
A woman who yearns for a child is put off when her new student begins doing strange things involving a snake. After waking in a parking lot, the teacher becomes pregnant with a reptilian creature. This episode is all well and good until it crashes and burns in a field where a silly CGI snake is celebrated by Danny Zuko’s animal-headed posse.
Easter*
Director: Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact)
Score: two and a half religious rodents out of five
A little girl who is uneasy about the Easter Bunny’s visit gets more than she fears when she stays awake and catches the character himself. The Easter Bunny is this creepy-as-fuck Jesus man-rabbit that’s all skin and no fluffy white fur. There’s not much to this one- she sees the creature and then is turned into a rabbit herself.
Mother’s Day
Director: Sarah Adina Smith (The Midnight Swim)
Score: three out of five bewitched baby bumps
A woman who cursed with a pregnancy every time she has sex goes to a fertility ritual gathering. She is drugged and kidnapped in the most romantic way, as she grows more and more pregnant with “the gateway”. This segment seems to focus on beauty over horror, and is in fact quite enchanting with all its natural female power. Sadly, the end really falls flat and is a huge disappointment in its unoriginality.
Father’s Day*
Director: Anthony Scott Burns
Score: four out of five deep daddy directions
Another woman (yup, the leads are all females so far) receives a mysterious package with a tape player inside. The recording is of her father who asks her to come find him. It’s very simple and vague, and relies heavily on the acting and your imagination. The story reminds me a little of Stranger Things, and I’d love to see how this short would do as a full-length film.
Halloween
Director: Kevin Smith (Tusk, the worst horror movie I’ve seen since Human Centipede)
Score: one out of five cringe-worthy car batteries
A douche who runs a scuzzy webcam business gets what’s coming to him when his cam girls rebel and use the power of three to cause some… er… discomfort. I’m all for a revenge story, but I’m not too into torture porn, and I really could have done without this episode ruining my favorite holiday.
Christmas
Director: Scott Stewart (Dark Skies)
Score: two out of five presented realities
Seth Green is out of luck when he is too late to get a last-minute Christmas present until he has the opportunity to steal the game from a man- or save his life. It sounds exciting, but all the episode is only comprised of a few virtual reality revelations and then it’s over.
New Year’s Eve
Director: Adam Egypt Mortimer (Some Kind of Hate)
Score: two and a half axe-girlfriends out of five
A tired single girl goes on a date with a yellow-toothed psycho, but he’s in for the quite the first date. I empathize, because I’d really like to do the same thing to some of the guys I’ve dated. Not a lot happens, and this episode seems like the shortest one, but it’s still mildly entertaining. Really great to watch before bed, because it makes you want to jump up and brush your teeth.
* friend favorite
Early Morning Horror Reviews 