Holiday Hell

There are warning signs when a movie is going to be pretty bad. The biggest one is when the same people are the writers, directors, and producers. This is a sure fire sign that a bunch of bored rich people are about to make a movie for the fun of it and it is going to be a dud!

This one had the telltale signs, but it also had some pretty innovative story lines. One storyline pretty much followed the ancient legend of the Golem from Jewish tradition, but the others were pretty original and deserve credit for being good ideas.

Now, the crime of the situation is that they were played out by a pretty amateurish cast with the exception of the shopkeeper!

The ending was pretty standard and stale. The kind of thing you pretty much see coming from a mile away.

I did enjoy the tales woven into the overall plot, but I cringed every time the casting spoiled the moment!

Holiday Hell (2019) is another holiday gem I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a morbid shop keeper closing up for the night on Christmas Eve when a persistent shopper comes in to buy a girl for her sister. As the shopper finds various interesting things in his store, the shop keeper tells her the short story behind the item and he how he acquired it.

This movie was created by four directors and stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), Jeffrey Arrington (All Too Human), Mandy Baker (The Alliance), Lisa Carswell (Z Nation), Lisa Coronado (Z Nation) and Forrest Campbell (Mr. Bleachers).

Jeffrey Combs was awesome in this from beginning to end with great narrations, storytelling and as an overall performance. As with any short story anthology some are better than others. The first story with the mask wasn't that great, the second story with the doll was pretty good, the Santa storyline was awesome and the final story wraps up the movie perfectly. There's inconsistent gore in these but the better stories obviously have the better kills.

Overall this is far from a classic but a worthwhile holiday horror short story anthology. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it at least once.

The first segment is the worst story because of the horrible acting. plus the story itself was weak. it was literally just people hanging out and getting killed one by one. the fight coordination was awful as well. it was like the director didn't care and just wanted to get it over with.

second story about a little boy and his doll was better but stories like that have been done to death.

third story involving a guy in santa costume getting revenge, had the best acting from the lead. finally someone with a fraction of talent.

movie overall is just very BLAH and a waste of time. it's just a bunch of rehashed ideas from other movies and tv shows. no thought was put into them

I watch movies so often that I'm running out of options and often look for new stuff on streaming apps like Netflix, Tubi, Crackle, Hulu, ect... Anyways, I don't understand people's ratings. I just watched Last American Horror Show on Tubi, and it was flat out TERRIBLE! How does that have a 6 and yet Holiday Hell is in the 3ish range? I must be watching something different than these people? Perhaps I'm partial, because anything with Jeffrey Combs gets an automatic 5 or above... Sure, this is low budget, but at least there is some work put in. I say it's a fun little anthology that doesn't look like a student project as some others do. Plenty people love Tales From The Crypt (including me), so I don't see how this is so different other than the lack of comic drawings and skeleton host. There is dark humor, the tales revolve around twisted morality, cheesiness, and some naked breasts. That's the good ol' formula for horror anthology to me.

Just another sup-par horror outing. As dbrown alluded to in his review, some very bad dialogue. Just really not much to see or hear.