All the Creatures Were Stirring

Truly had to suffer through this film. Picked it up at a redbox hoping for a good new holiday film with a horror twist. Instead we got an eighty minute waste of time. The actors of the subplot had less than zero chemistry. The majority of the anthology style short stories were tired, forced and hard to watch, gaining an easy eye-roll with every turn. Constance Wu's performance in the final short story was arguably the only shining light. She and the general idea for this movie are the only reasons this is getting more than one star. From the writing to the directing, the cinematography to the majority of the acting, this is a downright dreadful movie. Please save yourself the time.

Not a horrible anthology but some of the stories are a lot better then others.

Both as an anthology and as a Christmas horror movie, "All the Creatures Were Stirring" is far from perfect. In fact, it's a lackluster and wildly uneven movie altogether. On the other hand, though, I respect and even admire low-budget horror productions that dare to be different and original, and that's the least you can say about this omnibus. All the individual short segments, and the wraparound story, are unconventional and unique, and that's at least worth half of the optimistic score of 5/10 I gave!

On Christmas Eve, two people with nowhere else to go and absolutely nothing better to do, spend their first Tinder date together at a raunchy theater where three "actors" enact a series of holiday-themed stories with a bare minimum of decors and means. The stories turn into short films, and they are remarkable to say the least. There's a tale about an office Secret Santa party turning into a massacre, one about a traditional Yule demon, a modern version of Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, reindeers bent on bloody vengeance, and a totally bonkers fable about holiday-loving aliens. The wraparound story about the first date then eventually turns into the last story.

A few of the separate stories are ingenious and compelling ("Dash Away All", " In a Twinkling") and others are more derivative ("Arose such a Clatter"), but ALL of them have in common that they are creative, but sadly also too underdeveloped and abruptly ending with many questions left unanswered. There's some gore, but not enough. There's occasionally tension and atmosphere, but not enough. There are flashes of sardonic black humor, but ... well, you know the rest of that sentence.

In the end, I can't really recommend "All the Creatures Were Stirring" wholeheartedly, but surprisingly enough I enjoyed it. And so did my mate with whom I watched it. Who knows, maybe it's because I was rejoiced by the spirit of Christmas, or maybe it's because the other two holiday-themed horror movies we watched were total rubbish. Either way, in case you love Christmas horror but you have already seen all the obvious classics ("Black Christmas", "Silent Night Deadly Night", "Krampus",...) this one may be worth a peek.

They did this film for fun ,it shows its not gonna win any prizes but it has a twillight zone vibe that makes you go through the whole thing .In the end its an ok weird horror comedy .

Every holiday season, I like to offset my cookie cutter Hallmark/Lifetime movies with a couple Holiday Horror B movies. Balances it out or something. I've seen some real clunkers and some real gems but Christmas horror movies are especially difficult to get right. This movie however was decent for what it was. Being an anthology film, some segments were of course better than others and the film's limited budget shows but if you enjoy bad movies you'll have a decent enough time here. I found myself wishing that they went a step further to make it pure camp but I wasn't disappointed overall. Anyway grab a beer and have a watch. It definitely isn't the worst of the holiday horrors that's for sure. *No real gore and no nudity.