So then we have reached the new millennium, and in the 2000s we will see Christmas horror movies begin to proliferate. However things started quietly, and our first proper festive fright flick didn't arrive until 2003. This movie was Dead End, written and directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa, although it is filmed in the English language. It stars cult icons Ray Wise and Lin Shaye. It had its premiere screening on 30th January 2003 at the Gerardmer Film Festival. It then played various other film festivals over the summer and autumn, and got its first general release in the UK on 12th December 2003, just in time for Christmas.
The story is very simple, on Christmas Eve, a typical family is driving over to grandma’s house to spend Christmas with the family. In the present-laden car, is Dad, Frank (Ray Wise), Mom, Laura (Lin Shaye), daughter Marian (Alexandra Holden), her boyfriend Brad (Billy Asher), and annoying younger brother Richard (Mick Cain). Rather than take the interstate, as they do every year, Frank has decided to go the back way on a lonely road cutting through a large forest. However as we all know from countless other movies, and often real life experiences too, taking a scenic route can often lead to trouble. And indeed, things take a turn for the strange, after they pick up a mysterious woman in white…
And I will leave the plot synopsis there, for fear of unleashing spoilers. However suffice to say, they are not alone on this lonely road, and along the way as we will discover they are not such a happy family after all.
Dead End is a very fun little movie that presents a lot of memorable dark and strange scenes as the family travels down this increasingly troubling stretch of lonely road. There are some genuinely eerie events and more than a few shocks, however the real magic comes with the family dynamics. To start, the cast are brilliant in this, from Ray Wise as the father who’s temper is slowly fraying, to Lin Shaye’s always-look-on-the-bright-side Mom. And the kids are good too - Alexandra Holden’s Marion is clearly the golden child who has done well, her boyfriend Brad is clearly punching above his weight, while Mick Cain, as the superbly irritating Richard, gives us a memorable little brother from hell, now in his teenage years and going off the rails.
So then, if you need an antidote to all those saccharine movies about perfect families having perfect Christmases, well, Dead End is the film for you, showing us a more realistic family, who are flawed and get increasingly tetchy with each on this road trip gone awry. This realism is also subtly underscored by the fact that they are not travelling through the usual Hollywood Christmas weather - there’s not a hint of snow, just a brooding, dark winter forest and an empty road carpeted with long dead leaves. There is a great mix here of drama, comedy and unsettling chills, and it all adds up to a Christmas road trip you won’t forget, but may well want to revisit in future Christmases.
However, oddly enough, in one of the many strange coincidences in the world of Christmas horror, only a couple of years later we had a similarly themed movie about driving home for Christmas. 2007’s Wind Chill saw a student at a Pennsylvania University, played by Emily Blunt, who through a campus rideshare board, finds another student, a guy played by Ashton Holmes, and gets a ride home with him for the Christmas holidays. They are heading through the snow down to Wilmington, Delaware, but on the way decide to take, you guessed it, the dreaded scenic route. And let’s just say things take a turn for the worse from that point onwards.
Wind Chill was directed by Gregory Jacobs, who is better known as an assistant director and producer, often with Steven Soderberg, and has worked on a string of well-known movies such as Miller’s Crossing, Solaris, Magic Mike, Edge of Tomorrow, and Ocean’s Eleven. Indeed, Wind Chill was produced with support from George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's company Section Eight Productions. But despite this pedigree, Wind Chill received a somewhat frosty reception from critics back in the day, and I can’t help wondering if there was a certain snobbishness involved here, for Wind Chill is a fine little film.
To start with we have two quality actors in the lead roles, and Jacobs creates a convincingly threatening snowy atmosphere of tension and dread as the story progresses. The plot has some well-crafted twists and turns, and without giving away any spoilers, has some nice subtle touches, in particular the use of an old Christmas tune on the radio. Despite sounding somewhat similar to Dead End, Wind Chill is a very different sort of movie, whereas Dead End serves up a darkly comic visceral horror, Wind Chill takes a more eerie route looking to deliver snowy suspense and wintry chills. And as two different takes on the horrors of driving home from Christmas, they would make an excellent seasonal double bill!
However released between these two, was another Christmas horror, which at first looked very unpromising indeed. And I say unpromising because firstly it was another killer Santa movie, and really after the dizzily heights of Eric Freeman in Silent Night, Deadly Part 2, was there any point in doing another? And secondly because this movie was to star a professional wrestler, and as Hulk Hogan’s Santa With Muscles proved back in 1996, mixing wrestlers and Christmas did not a good movie make. Quite the opposite in fact!
So what was this ill-starred movie? Santa’s Slay, released on 20th December 2005 and starring wrestler Bill Goldberg as a murderous St. Nick, rampaging through a little town on his sleigh pulled by a hell-deer, and despatching residents with a variety of festively themed kills. But, despite sounding like a recipe for a truly awful Christmas chiller, Santa’s Slay proved to be a highly entertaining mix of comedy and festive horror.
To begin with, Bill Goldberg puts in a brilliantly over the top performance as this evil Santa, becoming the perfect villain you love to hate. The movie wisely lets him show off his physical prowess with many violent physical discourtesies committed against his victims, but Goldberg also proves a dab hand the comedy too, delivering one liners with gleeful relish and shameless mugging at the camera.
There is great support from the rest of the cast too. We have an engaging young hero, Nicholas Yuleson, played by a young Douglas Smith, who makes a great team with his girlfriend, Mary "Mac" McKenzie, played by Emilie de Ravin. However, often stealing the scenes, is young Nick’s grandad, who is played with admirable comic chops by Robert Culp, who we last saw in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 3. Grandad is the only man who knows the true secret of this evil Santa, and what a secret it is.
For it is here where the film plays the ace up its sleeve. For Goldberg’s maniac Santa isn't just a heavily muscled psycho, he is in fact a dark version of the real Santa. For in this movie, we learn that originally Santa was the child of Satan, born of a blasphemous virgin birth centuries ago. This Santa had an annual killing spree, until in 1005 AD he lost a curling match with an angel, and was magically bound to be good and give out presents for a thousand years, thus becoming the Santa we know and love. But of course in 2005, that ancient magic spell is breaking and Santa is free to go slaying on his sleigh again!
Very silly and hilariously violent, Santa’s Slay is a whole sackful of festive fun, proving that there was a whole lot more that could be done in the field of Christmas horror than just sticking a slasher in the famous red suit. Naturally the film has gained a cult following and is an annual rewatch for many. However, with the benefit of hindsight, this daft little film, deftly written and directed by David Steiman, was in fact very ahead of its time. For, while it is often classed as another Santa slasher, actually this is the first movie that explores the idea that there might be a darker, older mythology hiding behind the modern jolly fat man in a suit. And as we will hear very soon, there would be more movies coming in the next few years that would reveal sinister ancient mythological origins for St. Nick. Therefore Santa’s Slay is a truly pioneering film, actually the very first dark folklore Santa movie!
However all these three movies from the early 2000s show a very interesting development in the world of Christmas horror, and that is, while tales of killer Santas and serial killer chillers had very much dominated the festive fright flick, the new millennium saw film-makers begin to explore different avenues for seasonal chills, and there would be more to Christmas horror in the future than just having a murder among the mistletoe and merriment…
No comments:
Post a Comment