Holidays (2016) Reviews

• Holidays: Mediocre

  Platypuschow2019-01-08

  I had such high hopes for Holidays, I adore horror anthology's and one featuring the writing of Kevin Smith and starring Seth Green and Harley Morenstein! Sign me up. Sadly it didn't quite meet my expectations, and that is such a blinding shame. You see horror anthology's are generally 3-4 stories and a wraparound, Holidays dismisses the wraparound and instead tells a whopping 8 short stories (Each one based on a different holiday). This heavily reminded me of the ABC's of Death (2012) which was another horror anthology I was super excited for but turned out to be dire. That as well had a vast number of stories, different directors, writers and similar themes. Thankfully Holidays isn't that bad, but only because of a couple of the tales. Truth be told several of the 8 are really bad and I mean really bad. They're the kind of shorts you'll see on YouTube that leave you scratching your head afterwards, unsure as to what you just witnessed and what the point of it all was. Thankfully there are a few entertaining nuggets in there, some decent star power and sprinklings of charm. The stories range from weird, to gory, to oddly clever, but none exactly blew me away. My pick would be Valentines Day as the most entertaining with St.Patricks Day being the worst...........or possibly Mother's Day. Holidays on paper should have been fantastic but some disastrous writing near killed it for me, such a shame. The Good: Jocelin Donahue and Harley Morenstein Solid visuals The Bad: Some really stupid stuff

• You Want Them All To Be Good, But They Aren't.

  BatesMT2016-07-22

  Holidays does a few things right, and a lot of things wrong, and because of this, Holidays becomes a one time viewing. I don't ever see myself revisiting this flick intentionally. Let me start off by talking about some of my favorite parts. Easter was a creepy highlight. But it didn't flesh anything out enough to make you care about it. This is a problem that almost all the parts have. Christmas was my favorite part but it might just be my Seth Green bias. The ending wasn't as predictable as New Years, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Halloween was... stupid. And sadly, after Xmas, Easter, and New Years this might be my fourth favorite. You could tell it was Kevin Smith directing it. That doesn't help in my opinion. New Years was actually a lot of fun, with 2 awkward characters. You could see the twist coming a mile away but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. Valentine's, St Paddy's Day, Mother's and Father's Day all were lacking severely with the worst of them being Mother's Day. The ending was just abrupt and confusing. Father's Day had a lot of good build up to an awful ending. Valentine's Day really reminded of something out of Creepshow. Again it was predictable and the characters were way too over the top and just not believable in the slightest. St. Paddy's Day had a lot of potential as it had a little girl who was seriously creepy. The ending was just bizarre and the whole build up was a "WTF" moment. It went from Day 12 to Day 366 in an instant. All in all this was not a good anthology movie, nowhere near Creepshow or Trick r' Treat quality.

• Never trust the girl you bully.....

  FlashCallahan2016-07-31

  A horror anthology about some of the less spooky special days on the calendar. These short stories by some of the most bewildering film makers find the darkness and bloodshed in New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, and other holidays..... Anthology films are always a mixed bag of quality, but for some reason you know that the bookended shorts are always the finest, which can be vexing sometimes as you have to sit through some trash to get to the gold. But luckily there are more gems than junk, and this is one of the better anthology movies to be released in a while. The good. I particularly like the Christmas short. Seth Green plays a hapless father who just misses out on getting his son the most sought after present of the holiday. But the guy who got the last one has a fatal bout of angina and dies. All seems well until Green tries the product, and realises its from the point of view of the deceased, but that's not all he sees...., Valentines day was pretty macabre, and had a Carrie vibe about it. It's pretty short and to the point, but there is a wonderful sting in its tail. Halloween was the funniest, and as it's by Kevin Smith, it's not very surprising. We follow Ian who is running a girlie webcam site, when he attempts to assault the girls, he gets knocked out, and made to do what he makes lots of money for. It's not scary, but it's funny, and again, the writing is pretty good. New year is your basic karma story. We follow Reggie, whom has just killed a partner for making him miserable, but obviously he has a screw loose. Cut to Eli Roths wife, who finds his picture on a dating site. After making an idiot of himself during the date, she invites him back to her place. After all, who wants to be alone on New Years Eve?? It's short, but to the point, and it's quite funny too. A really bizarre entry, but the scariest of all the stories is Father's Day. A girl receives a package from her seemingly dead father, a tape deck and tape giving her instructions of where to find him. But the genius part is that he made the tape whilst he was with her younger self, so it makes it that little bit more macabre. The rest are just a little bit too out there, and in turn, are a little bit boring. We have one about a snake that looks like Danny Zucko from grease, a weird birth that was just too boring to even give it a chance, and a very good looking Easter segment, but the subliminal elements of child abuse just soured it a little too much for me. But all in all, it's a fun anthology, offering something for everyone.

• Sucks

  janiecerborens2016-07-19

  The word sucks comes to mind. Have you ever watched some of the older Amicus anthologies or Creepshow? Don't expect anything close. This must have been a high school film project or maybe it was a favor to another actor's kid. These are the shortest stories ever that don't resolve or explain anything, just keep you hanging. Perhaps the episode where the young woman finds the tape deck would be interesting. Nope. I even fast forwarded to the end because of all the blah blah. I get to the end. Surely some explanation here. Nope.There's a guy in a chair, looks,like a monster? What happened?!?! I'm finding it difficult to come up with enough lines for this bad anthology or else I can't post this review.

• The Horror ...

  kosmasp2016-11-26

  So it isn't that easy to make an Anthology after all. That's one of the "positive" things you can take from watching this. If you're mean you could even argue that SyFy has done better feature length movies than most of the shorts being on display here. One thing is for certain: there is not much to cherish to be found here. And it's a shame, because it did sound cool. Kevin Smith alone doing a short sounds great. But then again, I guess even he was either too busy with other stuff or somehow else occupied. Maybe something else happened, you never know, except you do know where the short stories are going. And almost none of them actually can create a mood, a tension, a story or anything else substantial to hold the viewers attention. There are some neat effects (the Easter Bunny story comes to mind) and occasionally a bit of quality that seems to shine through a story. But in the end, it's more like "whatever" and "why did I watch this again?" feelings that overwhelmingly win and leave you befuddled