My latest marathon includes two that take place on Halloween, one that takes place on Thanksgiving weekend, and two Christmas flicks. But did they all manage to deliver on the holidays and the horror and earn places on the holiday horror page? Let’s find out.
RATCHET (2025)
File under movies I didn’t understand. File under movies that have cool kills and a creepy killer but not much else. File under movies that have Halloween in the plot description but only mention the holiday a few times with no actual sign of the holiday in sight. File under the many movies that shouldn’t be 2-hours long.
The opening credits are classic, with eerie shots of the killer assembling a mannequin. The first kill is also great, with a throat slash edited in such a way that it totally caught me off guard.
The story, unfortunately, drags on and on. Our main woman is witness to thugs shoot a dude carrying a bouquet of flowers and wearing what looks like a scarecrow mask. She also watches as the seemingly dead man comes back to life before he goes on a killing spree.
In between people occasionally being murdered, the main woman works with both a detective and psychics to try to solve the case. The investigating elements really weigh the movie down, taking away from the impact of some great kills, suspense, and chase scenes. A crotch split on a sex worker with an axe is especially memorable.
The random victims get no character development, but they are usually painted as lowlifes. Hell, there’s even a small group of sketchy queers at one point, and one of them is a female who uses a fake penis to piss like a man. Now that’s what I call diverse representation.
Kills aside, the final scene between the main girl and the killer comes and goes and I was still clueless as to what anything in this movie meant.
HALLOWEEN NIGHT (2024)
This Halloween slasher makes the smart move of not wearing out its welcome, running only 73 minutes long and getting right to the point. It’s also totally derivative, but that’s okay since it feels fun and familiar.
Would you believe a killer escapes a mental institution at Halloween time and comes home to kill some more? The difference here is that this dude is schizo, so he talks to himself a lot before donning a clown costume.
There are several “main kids”, and that’s the one problem: their stories never seem to converge beyond them going to the same school. The first girl lost her mother to the killer, and she has a very Michael Myers moment outside her classroom window.
Another girl is babysitting, and she has a very When a Stranger Calls Back moment outside her front door.
Another girl gives off final girl vibes as she becomes romantically involved with the guy she works with.
There’s some Halloween décor around, but the movie is not heavy on the holiday, because the plot makes it known that ever since the first round of murders no one trick or treats anymore. However, the final scene, which takes place a year later, goes full Halloween celebration.
The guy playing the psycho clown nails the insanity, and there are a few satisfactory, brutal kill scenes, as well as some great setup shots.
My favorite moment was when three of the main girls surround the killer clown at the end and there’s a glorious fall prism behind them. At the same time, it’s also by far the biggest letdown, because just when the girls are finally going to team up to beat the crap out of him, cops swarm them and tell them to get out of the way and use guns instead. So much for a major climax.
THE LIZZIE BORDEN GAME (2025)
This is my kind of simple, supernatural slasher movie in the tradition of basic Bloody Mary plots.
It opens with two young sisters playing “The Lizzie Borden Game”. The rules are simple; you need to have the guts to recite the infamous Lizzie rhyme in front of a mirror…because she then comes out of the mirror and hacks up your guts.
Next, our main group of friends gets together for a Friendsgiving. This movie isn’t very Thanskgivingy, but while they don’t have any turkey, Lizzie Borden definitely carves up a lot of white meat.
It’s the usual situation. Talk gets around to different stories about what happens to people who play the game, and then they decide to play. While they’re playing, the main girl even sees visions of the original Lizzie Borden murder spree. I mean…alleged murder spree.
For a while, we just get cheap faux scares, like a hand reaching really slowly for a shoulder and then the person attached to the hand saying, “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Bitch, that slow, calculated reach was totally intentional.
Anyway, Lizzie eventually enters the real world and starts hacking the fuck out of her victims. Like, super gory and great. Hell, she splits her first victim—a male—in half, starting at his crotch with manual axe swings. Ouch.
This is a good reminder that sometimes brutal and gnarly kills are enough. Adding a bit of interest to the proceeding, the movie offers a totally different take on Lizzie Borden’s case.
KILLER RACCOONS! 2! (2020)
Okay, so this is a sequel to a 2005 movie called Coons! from the same director. Smart of them not to title this one Killer Coons…. Not sure if I saw the original back in the SyFy days, but I think I would remember it if I had. Either way, based on some references to it in this follow-up, that film was about a summer camp being terrorized by killer raccoons.
The sequel is actually a Christmas movie! It isn’t, however, a comedy creature feature, which I assume the first film was. This is a totally goofy farce, with intentionally adolescent humor, bad green screen, cheesy acting, and raccoon puppets. You either have the patience for this type of silliness or you don’t.
Quite honestly, the raccoon puppets and the little sounds they make are funnier than 95 percent of the human roles in the movie.
Some of the main characters from the first film are back, but played by different actors, which I only know because they purposely poke fun at how none of them looks the same. The main guy who survived first time around gets on a train ride to DC, and finds himself pitted against a bunch of terrorists…and government trained raccoons.
It’s pure absurdity as everyone fights gun-toting raccoons, but the train is loaded with Christmas décor, there are plenty of sexual jokes, and Ron Jeremy makes an appearance, apparently right before he was arrested for sexual assault in real life, never to be seen again.
Scenes of fighting and killing raccoons are hilarious, and the only time humans outshine the puppets in the comedy department is when the main good guy fights the main bad guy at the end in a slapstick scene that even had my hubby laughing.
A CREATURE WAS STIRRING (2024)
I really have no idea what this film was trying to accomplish, because it goes nowhere and nothing happens. However, if you love Pontypool, you might like this, because it’s basically Pontypool with Santa.
The story of what happened before the “plot” begins is presented as comic book panels during the opening credits. There was a zombie apocalypse, and the elves, reindeer, and Mrs. Claus were all infected, so Santa moved to Texas with his pet polar bear, where he lives alone transmitting a radio show to any survivors that are still out there and need some uplifting.
So as not to feel lonely, Santa strikes up a friendship with an AI girl in an app. He tells stories to listeners when on air. He has a sort of domesticated zombie friend who hangs around outside. He does a song and dance number (with his polar bear). He goes scavenging for supplies. He cooks. He practices fighting for a zombie battle that never happens.
This is literally just a movie about Santa killing time after the apocalypse. The only thread of motivation is a late plot introduced that has Santa concerned when he learns that a young girl left her safe house to go find him. The big climax? No rescue mission. No zombie fighting. Just Santa worrying until the girl shows up safely at his door. The end. We don’t even get any fantasy footage for Santa fetishists—not even when he takes a shower and is just shown from the neck up.
