My latest marathon covers several holidays, some more than others. Let’s find out if they all make my holiday horror page.
THE VICTORVILLE MASSACRE (2011)
At last, I found a horror movie that takes place on Labor Day weekend. In this case, a group of friends uses the holiday weekend to party at a house in a small town.
This is a really likable group of friends, which is rare in slashers these days. I actually enjoyed their banter as they took their road trip, soaked in a hot tub, and played Truth or Dare. Not surprisingly, two girls make out during the game.
Even the kills are sleek and violent, and the killer wears a hooded robe and a mask, providing a cool presence. The slashing even begins strong, with a couple going off to have sex….
Unfortunately, the film gets a little messy as it tries to create a backstory and killer motivation through distracting flashbacks that start to infiltrate right when the slasher pacing finally picks up. Not to mention, the “twist” reveal of the killer isn’t very surprising, because it’s made obvious right from the start which character has a conflict that might push them to murder.
SLAY RIDE (2024)
Olivia Dunkley directs, cowrote, and stars in this flick, which borrows familiar 80s slasher themes but ends up being more of a holiday home invasion horror flick.
The score is awesome, making Christmas music sound sinister, which sets the tone. As does some great initial outdoor footage of snowy houses decorated for the season. However, after that, it visually shifts into what is clearly a low budget endeavor.
Newspaper clips during the intro credits reveal that a little boy witnessed his dad kill his mom on Christmas when he was a child. That boy was locked up in a mental institution years ago. Uh-oh.
You guessed it. He escapes on Christmas and comes home. After an initial kill in a random house, he shows up in the back seat of the main woman, who is on her way home to see her son and husband. A rather hilarious fight breaks out between the psycho Santa and the woman as she continues to drive, and she literally kicks him out of her car.
Leo from Charmed makes a brief appearance as a detective, and he gives the main woman and her family some police protection outside their home in a squad car. If you don’t know how that’s going to work out for the cops, you need to watch more horror movies.
Thing is, there’s a very low body count, and most of the movie ends up being about this very animated and kooky, talkative, psycho Santa keeping the family tied up in their house. I was really underwhelmed by the unfolding of events in this fairly generic flick.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST CHRISTMAS (2025)
Obviously, this has nothing to do with the famous franchise, and obviously it follows the same exact basic plot, but you know what’s not so obvious? Why do people who accidentally killed someone a year ago, or ten years ago, or even twenty years ago still continue to go to a reunion with all guilty participants invited when dozens of movies have made it clear what the outcome of such reunions is?
The film introduces us to a killer Santa in a black mask…in the main girl’s fricking nightmare sequence! Does that mean our main girl has psychic powers? No, so it’s kind of ridiculous.
She does get a note inviting her to regroup with her friends a year after a prank gone wrong.
The house they gather at has Christmas lights, but don’t expect a wintery vibe. There’s no snow, and the trees are all green. Blah. Also, after the first dead friend is discovered, the group spends a lot of time just sitting there talking about how they can’t just sit there and do nothing.
The movie is only an hour and 8 minutes long, there are a few fun Santa kills and good body reveals, but there are no scares or suspense, although the final girl’s dumb decision to “hide” under a pool table is perhaps the best bad scene ever. There’s even a little lesbian element to the plot eventually. Bottom line is cool Santa, cool kills, but not much else.
HEADLESS: A SLEEPY HOLLOW STORY (2022)
This delightful occult comedy was originally a webseries, but the individual episodes have been linked together as a movie on Tubi. It’s a fun and unique, modern twist on the classic Washington Irving story, manages to include Irving’s other famous character Rip Van Winkle in the mix, and even indulges in some meta horror moments.
The writers/directors star in the film as three of the leads, but everyone in the cast puts their all into it, making for a great production. The guy playing Brom Bones especially shines as a comedic actor.
A banjo player/singer serves as the Greek chorus, carrying us through the story with his musical narrative, which sets the whimsical tone of the show.
Ichabod Crane comes to work as a teacher, rents a room, and ends up with the Headless Horseman as his roommate! In a fun take on the story, Ichabod, Brom Bones (cleverly cast as a gym teacher), and a goth witch who works at an occult shop band together to try to find the Headless Horseman’s head.
It turns into a mystery of witchcraft and the supernatural as their hunt becomes an investigation of the sinister history of the town of Sleepy Hollow. The hook of the show is that the witch is able to use sorcery to give the Headless Horseman temporary heads…of dead people. Teehee. Each time she does, the Headless Horseman takes on the persona of the deceased, making for some funny situations.
The show moves at a good pace, but there are a few unnecessary side stories that throw the plot off track once in a while and simply aren’t funny enough to warrant their inclusion.
The last episode makes for a great finale, with plenty of surprises, as well as appearances by two supernatural show alum: Tom Lenk, who played Andrew on Buffy, and Felicia Day, who played Charlie on Supernatural. Awesome.
If I have one complaint, it’s that the show absolutely should have taken place entirely at Halloween time and indulged in fall foliage and holiday decor. There’s a…um…nod to the Headless Horseman’s pumpkin head, and only one scene referencing Halloween, with some Halloween decor splashed on a wall in the backdrop. That’s all we get. Halloween is never celebrated at all.
ZOMBIES: CHRISTMAS APOCALYPSE (2024)
This one won’t be getting a spot on the holiday horror page, because it’s actually just a previously released, non-Christmas horror movie called Zombies that has been expanded by 30 minutes with a side story focusing on one of the original film’s minor characters.
This added side story does take place at Christmas time, and it simply bookends the original Zombies movie. This guy proposes to his woman in a bar, and as they’re leaving, they are attacked by zombies. He fights back, which lands him in jail, where the original Zombies begins, with this guy’s cellmate being the main character of that movie, which I cover here.
After the original movie ends, we circle back to the guy from the beginning. He’s free from prison and walking out in the snow as Christmas music plays, to further justify renaming this as a Christmas zombie movie. His newly added story arc with his fiancée from the beginning gets some closure. Taken on its own without a whole separate movie dropped in the middle of it, it’s actually a fun little zombie short. It’s definitely odd that a whole movie about another guy concludes with this, but props to the filmmaker for extracting a minor role from his original movie and creating a complete, unrelated story in the same universe.
BAD BUNNY (2025)
After opening with a big hillbilly bear with great tits banging his bunny rabbit, this movie becomes a surprisingly serious backwoods creature feature slasher.
A woman comes to live in a house in the woods after the death of her man and is soon being terrorized by what is obviously the human/hybrid offspring of the banged bunny from the beginning. The movie doesn’t need to get into the details, because everyone knows that when you fuck a bunny, it gives birth to a bunny man.
The bunny man looks freaky fantastic and makes nasty noises, and he gets to kill an assortment of random characters throughout the course of the film. Plus, the kills are nice and vicious with some complementary, chaotic camerawork. The part that I didn’t like was that the bunny man also gets the main girl’s dog. WTF? The dog’s part in the film is so irrelevant that they didn’t even need to include it just to kill it.
Most of the movie has the main girl just trying to evade and escape the bunny man as he chases her, and it simply starts to get repetitive. Even so, the final fight to the death is fricking brutal, and the final girl’s emotional breakdown at the end is pretty heartbreaking for an indie slasher. And you simply have to love the final frame.
As is usually the case, this is not an Easter horror film, but what better time to watch a killer bunny movie than on Easter weekend? Therefore, it’s going on the holiday horror page.
