Holidays

It seems modern horror has a huge liking to anthology films, a feature film featuring multiple small stories usually connected in theme or a overlapping storyline. Holidays is the latest one to join that niche and even carrying some bigger names with it still manages to fall quite short of what it could of been. The overall theme for Holidays is each film centers around a different holiday. We start with "Valentine's Day" a decent little story of a younger bullied girl taking on her bully along with fulfilling her ill quest for love for her teacher she has. It's a decent film and not a bad way to start the film. By far the weirdest though is "St Patricks Day" with a creepy red headed child using her magic powers I assume to impregnate her teacher with a snake child. It was odd, somewhat disturbing, but ultimately is almost too short and too odd to leave a good lasting impression. "Easter" is up next and though one of the shorter films and a tough subject to do I'd assume isn't all that bad. It has a good looking monster in it and is just okay for the length and story it tries to give. "Mother's Day" is one of the worst ones here featuring a girl who whenever she engages in sex gets pregnant and is then sent to a cult. It's odd in a bad way and not at all anything interesting to watch. The next one is the shining beacon of this analogy though and takes place in the form of "Father's Day". It features a woman with an abandoned father who leaves her a tape to go and locate her. It is dark, tense, and bleak short film that leaves you waiting for the big moment. Sadly that moment falls way short of anything it should of but the lead up to it is still so worthy of it. The biggest disappointment though is Kevin Smith's "Halloween" short. By far the easiest one to do and instead we get something barely relating. It features three webcam girls taking revenge on their rude pimp they have. Featuring Kevin Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith and Harley from the webseries "Epic Meal Time" it is just a short revenge flick. It isn't horrible, the first half of it is ultimately very weak and the ending could of been more graphic, it just comes down to the director not fully utilizing the holiday he was given. Seth Green directs and stars in the following one titled "Christmas". It features him attempting to get a new Virtual Relality headset for him son for Christmas when the guy in front of him gets it. Upon following him into the parking lot the man has a medical attack and dies in the parking lot allowing Seth to take the toy. Upon using it however it reads his mind and shows other what he truly did to get the gift. It is a decent story but by the end just flows into generic territory and almost feels out of place in this analogy. Closing out the film however is "New Year's Day", a generic film with a twist. Odd enough it is still one of the better ones here. It follows a killer using online dating to find his next victim when the tables turn on him. A fun, violent, short little film. Overall Holidays falls short in almost every story, even the best one has a big disappointment in it. I can't recommend this one over the loads of other analogy horror films currently out there. Score : 3/10 https://apocalypticdemise.com/2016/05/01/holidays-2016-review/

Horror anthology loosely organized around holidays, where each short is thematically related to a different holiday. The usual problem with these sorts of anthologies is wildly uneven quality, but in this case the quality is fairly consistent and reasonably strong. One of the many oddities of "Holidays" is that the worst short is the one by the most famous director included here, Kevin Smith. It seems like he wasn't even trying with his Halloween short and its disappointing that they gave the most on-topic holiday for a horror movie to someone who seems so disinterested. Another oddity is that the first five shorts all have female protagonists, with only one being written and directed by a woman. It is almost immediately apparent which that is, not because it is appreciably better or worse than the others, but because of its attitudes toward its female characters, and the way it handles nudity (something that is mostly absent in the rest of the shorts). The fact that several films in a row all feature not especially strongly drawn or unique protagonists, some of whom are almost interchangeable, is a problem. The shorts are organized chronologically through the calendar year, starting with Valentine's Day and ending on New Year's Eve, but I think it might have been better to reorder them so that a sense of repetition didn't start to set in before there was some variation. The final short is actually the best, in terms of telling a compelling story with the most interesting characters we meet in the whole series. It is largely a two-hander and ends on a satisfyingly twisty note. And that brings up a third oddity -- all except the final short, and Smith's, have intriguing ideas, set-ups and situations that the various writers and directors seem unable to resolve in a very satisfying way. Some of them just end, some try for a conclusion that is perhaps meant to be ambiguous or disturbing, but they fail to stick the landing. Its strange to watch a bunch of short films in a row that share the same strengths and the same weakness. I'd say most of the writers and directors represented here show promise, even if most of them don't quite deliver as fully as I'd have liked, and I look forward to more from any of these filmmakers. I don't know that I'll be returning to this collection of shorts anytime soon.

I am 13 and this has to be the worst thing I've watched. Do not even waste your time watching this movie! It was grotesque and unfortunately, I CANNOT unsee some of those scenes. This sacrilegious movie gave me nightmares. It was horribly made with terrible actors. This movie mocked Jesus and that is not ok. It was, like I said, grotesque. It was extremely inappropriate! The trailer was completely deceiving making the movie look amazing. The next review I'm filing is the review for the trailer😡

With all the lackluster horror anthologies that have come out in the last few years, this highly entertaining movie is a nice and surprising blend of predictability ("Valentine's Day"), odd surrealism ("St. Patrick's Day"), purely disturbing ("Easter"), humorously pleasing ("Christmas" and "New Year's Eve") and ironically satisfying ("Halloween"). I went in expecting very little from the film, but I came away from these holidays ready to experience them again. Seth Green is well chosen for his part as is ALL the actors in the film. This is a well done, well made film, well directed film, and inching its way into my own personal collection.

I just want to make it clear i love horror anthologies. I saw this and I was hooked, I thought this was going to be really good or at least ABC of death OK... It was painfully bad, nothing I mean nothing could be salvaged. A lot of things didn't make any sense in any of the shorts, it felt half written or probably they used monkeys chained to a typewriter honestly that would have made sense, all of them fall flat, your wishing the next one will be the good one like in V/H/S some were OK others bad but there was one that was just excellent. I kept watching to see that one, the one that would make it all worth it, there's not such a thing in this pile of crap, Kevin Smith couldn't save this sinking ship. Just stay away from it, it's not worth it if your looking for any kind of sense in it.