The Leech

This was a very entertaining ride with great performances all around! The contrasting personalities of Father David and Terry created some hilarious moments and lots of great tension ("I was just crankin one out!"). I laughed out loud a lot during this! It was a hoot seeing Father David's slow descent into madness and depravity and him trying to save the souls of these two agents of chaos. I loved how Terry and Lexi become this corrupting force in his well-ordered life and bring it all crashing down. Father David's transformation throughout the film is fantastic. His unhinged rant at the midnight mass was a great scene. I loved how the film explored and twisted the theme of "help thy neighbor" in hilarious and dark ways. Overall this was a super entertaining blast of twisted Christmas cinema!

It's very clear that a non-religious person wrote this film and that they take a dim view of priests, and all of that would be fine if they had something intelligent to say.

Instead, an extremely far-fetched narrative takes place that is so thin only the worst demographic of horror fans could find it redemptive. David is a humble priest who struggles to keep his small town and nearly empty church afloat. Here's the thing - Catholic priests are pretty much NEVER this isolated. The Roman Catholic Church is a huge organization and some may dismiss its bureaucracy as less than spiritual, but in fact it serves a very moral purpose: to keep priests from turning into Evangelical cult leaders or tv preachers, the level of education and social system inherent to Roman Catholicism would render this entire movie utterly implausible. Really, David should have been an Evangelical or Baptist preacher, but then the pseudo-intellectual who came up with this mean-spirited film couldn't make him "bad" because he's a celibate closeted homosexual instead of a married man.

Isolated and deeply religious, all it takes are a few drinks with a deranged homeless couple to whom he naively offers shelter to turn him into a schizophrenic severe alcoholic and mass murderer.

It's so far-fetched, it's so so bad....the homeless people are also depicted so meanly, so cruelly, like a stereotype of what a conservative jerk thinks a homeless person is - rude, entitled, stupid, addicted to drugs, and utterly corrupt.

It's just a bad movie. I waited for it to get better or redeem itself and no it was just an excuse for an angry atheist to use a mediocre religious backdrop in a violent low budget flick.

After taking in a homeless man, a priest's invitation to have him stay during the holiday season descends into chaos when the homeless man and his girlfriend move in and turn his life upside down, sending him on a downward spiral that will test his faith like never before.

Overall, this one had its moments, but it does fall flat at points. The main aspect of this one is the highly enjoyable sense of characterization that takes place here where the slow corruption that takes place becomes painfully obvious. Seeing how he starts off as the righteous and straightlaced preacher that tends to use religious anecdotes to genuinely help others and be a better person which becomes tested in the greatest tradition and sets things up nicely going forward. The comedic undertones present in the means through which they start to test his limits upon first arriving with their constant indulges in vice, tempting him through alcohol or debaucherous sex, and flat-out rejecting his pious designs on their lives that gives way to a frenetic and otherworldly second half where the extravagant visuals are utilized at their best point. That still doesn't save the film from having a rather slow and almost unworthy build up until that point where the film attempts to set him on this path of corruption through generally non-horrific means. With the majority of the focus here on their uncouth behavior with wanton language, alcohol use, sexual deviance, and otherwise just generally acting in as non-Christian of a manner as they can around him that causes the priest to slip into the muck with them, the horror tone is somewhat missing for the vast majority of these scenes with the attempts offering more of a comedy atmosphere. Considering how all of this comes across with very little interaction or change in tone, the potential is there for this to be a bland time without much let-up which thankfully is the only real issue with the film.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, sexual themes, and Violence.

A devout priest with a dwindling congregation is faced with a chance to put his words into action, when he finds a down and out man sleeping in one of the pews after mass.

Sensing the priest to be a do-gooder, the man cons his way into his home, before having his girlfriend pretend to be pregnant, in order to do the same.

However, their debaucherous lifestyle takes a toll on the poor priest, as they begin to gaslight, and attempt to blackmail him.

This pushes him down a dark path, that has him leaving the people he has truly been helping behind, and hallucinating that he has manifested an evil presence into his life.

Which is when things start to take a weird, almost psychedelic...and violent...turn.

One from which there will be no going back.

What starts out as a horror-comedy, of sorts, definitely ends off on a more dark angle.

Despite the fact that they try to keep things light-hearted throughout.

The concept explored here is really quite simple, yet well executed.

With some really solid acting from all involved.

While certainly not your typical Christmas themed horror film, it certainly is rather entertaining.

With two of the five actors in the film, also playing roles in the equally entertaining Christmas Bloody Christmas.

I'm not exactly sure what the relationship between the crews responsible for those two films is, but there certainly seems to be something there.

Either way, however, this is certainly worth a watch if you are looking for a dark comedy to entertain you this Christmas.

Perhaps make it a double feature.

You won't be disappointed.

6 out of 10.

I like Jeremy Gardner. He is the director of two good horror movies, BATTERY (2012) and AFTER MIDNIGHT (2019). I like the later even more, even though it is not a traditional horror movie, it's weird, with offbeat comedic vibes.

THE LEECH is even weirder. Acting is good. JG is a good actor, too. This movie kept my interest until the end. Slow to start but in the end, all hell breaks loose. I expected it to be funnier, i thought it was a comedy-horror. Whereas there are indeed some funny scenes, i wouldn't categorise it as comedy-horror. This is a strange indie horror movie, way darker than it seems at the start.

I can't rate it higher because it made me feel uncomfortable and not in a good way. There are many movies that make you feel uncomfortable and i, usually, enjoy this feeling, but i didn't enjoy much this one. I can't explain it further because i don't wanna give a spoil. For sure, it was a hell of a ride, and if you wanna watch a really weird horror movie that does not hold back, you will probably enjoy it. I didn't, therefore, i can't recommend it.