WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
I’ll be honest, I’ve had this article planned out for a while, mainly inspired by my Unconventional Christmas and Death at the Party articles released around Christmastime. It was pushed to front of my mind when watching Holidays so here’s a little reminder that horror isn’t just for Halloween…
Beaster Bunny
I’ll be honest, going into this film I was expecting something rather bad and extremely cheesy. Well, you know what? I wasn’t disappointed, it just turned out A LOT worse than I was expecting. The deaths are cheap, especially the second one with the way she waves her arms around in the air – who reacts like that? Don’t get me started on how the Beaster Bunny itself actually looks! I think it’s supposed to be a puppet but it just makes it look like the art of puppetry has been lost. How did we get to the point that budget suddenly meant that the films had to be bad? I also don’t think I have ever seen a more obvious gratuitous tit shot. Actually, there’s more bare breasts in this film than an actual horror (unless you take in account the film being made in the first place), its just cheap! I want to know if there’s supposed to be any relevance to the dog catcher company being named after a J.D Salinger novel – because it’s never pointed out.
Trick
Some will think that Halloween is an obvious choice for a horror article, especially as I did say above that horror isn’t just for Halloween, but I did do a whole article on Christmas Horror so it would feel a bit wrong to add another one here. I didn’t expect it to turn out that the main villain’s nickname would be Trick and definitely was not expecting it to be so violent so early on! The biggest question over the whole film is who is Patrick ‘Trick’ Weaver? Or more to the point, what is he? This is all slightly explained towards the end of the film. You could probably look at this almost like Halloween meets Saw with touches of Scream thrown in because Trick is a similar style bogeyman to that of Michael Myers and the slasher element (along with the closing reveal) is intertwined with some crazy contraptions.
Unlucky Charms
OK, so it isn’t obvious that this film is set on St Patrick’s Day but it does come recommended as a film to watch for some St Paddy’s Day horror. This film actually isn’t as cheesy as I was expecting it to be – but it’s definitely TV-movie level rather than a silver screen. I love the fact that the ones committing the murders in this film, no matter how unwillingly, start to become the victims. Mainly because they were never truly evil in the first place. I started to wonder if Darla is the little girl that Farr Darrig is talking to at the beginning of the film because she is able to handle the charms, and he describes her as still being full of hope even when the world is without it.
The Bay
The other ‘holidays’ mentioned in this article are celebrated all around the world – whereas 4th July is specific to America. This time, I bring you a found-footage horror (did you really think you would have this type of article from me without one?). I feel like this has a little bit of a REC feel to it – maybe caused by the use of a reporter – but it just didn’t seem to have the same fear factor…until the first jump scare! The crazy thing is that none of this film is based on a true story but my god does it feel like it could be true. I’ll be honest this film made me more uncomfortable, and maybe a little nauseous at times, than scare me because the realistic nature of this film is a tad unnerving.
Bloody New Year
It’s probably really sad, but the first thing I thought during the fairground scene was ‘I swear that’s Southend?’ It seems that where the main characters become trapped, is stuck on New Year’s Eve 1959 judging by the opening scene – meaning the film isn’t actually set at New Year but is just themed around New Year’s Eve instead, albeit a little loosely. I say that because it seems to be a coincidence that an incident happened while this party took place, causing the time trap. Frustratingly, nothing truly horror-related actually happens until about 40 minutes into the film but even then none of it is particularly scary. When it comes to horrors in hotels, I think I’ll stick with The Shining.
