Holidays

Still just chugging through 2016 releases over here. This is a horror anthology on Netflix - you know the drill, a collection of five or six horror shorts from different directors, much like V/H/S and its ilk - where all kinds of different holidays get the horror treatment. There were eight in total, meaning no short was more than fifteen minutes long or so. Here, let's tackle them in order.

"Valentine's Day"

An unpopular girl bullied by the rest of her swim team pines obsessively for her coach. This whole short seems to exist for the sake of a graphic punchline, but I'm okay with it! Sets the table appropriately. Felt like the kind of thing one of us might have tried to get away with in multimedia class (Keith, specifically?) but with actual production value.

"St. Patrick's Day"

Takes place in Ireland (of course) and the only scary moments involve a stereotypical "ginger" girl stalking her teacher and just looking creepy as all hell with a yellowy smile planted on her freckled face under wiry blonde-red hair. Gah! This one quickly gets campy and absurd, but in a head-slapping way fit for the holiday it honors.

"Easter"

So, what are the two symbolic representations of Easter? The late Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. And what are those, to a little girl? They're a man who came back from the dead and a giant furry thing that sneaks around your house at night. Holy shit, if any holiday was ripe for the horror treatment, it's this one! Probably the scariest of the stories - monsters, darkness - but also the slightest, thematically. (Which is saying something. All of these were slight.)

"Mother's Day"

A woman who gets pregnant every single time she has sex ends up kidnapped by some sort of witch covent in the desert. The payoff was weak as hell, which is a shame, because, well, what a set up.

"Father's Day"

All suspense, start to finish. Definitely the creepiest and most suspenseful of the shorts. Not worth describing - you've just got to see it.

"Halloween"

Ugh... Yeah, this was Kevin Smith's segment. It was absolute nonsense, which is what he specializes in now. It didn't even make sense. To his credit, he doesn't rely on a single preexisting Halloween trope, instead making a "horror" vignette about cam girls. This wasn't the worst of the shorts, but it was certainly the dumbest.

"Christmas"

Oh hey, Seth Green's in this one! A recognizable actor! Felt very Black Mirror - a man goes to desperate lengths to acquire a virtual reality headset for his son for Christmas, and when he tries it out  for himself he sees some pretty fucked up shit. I liked this one a lot, but that's maybe just because this is my favorite genre of horror - a blend of psychological and sci-fi.

"New Year's Eve"

An awkward first date turns into an, uh, unforgettable New Year's Eve. Best use of a New Year's countdown I've ever seen!

In the end, it's a mixed bag of "something for everyone." You've got some absurdly campy shit, some monster jump scares, some Black Mirror, some axe murder - none of it was great, but the variety alone makes this an easy collection to take in. I can't "recommend" it, but I had more fun with it than I did with V/H/S even if it feels like a lesser overall experience.