It’s a trio of flicks from my Tubi watchlist, so let’s get right into them.
THE NAUGHTY LIST OF MR. SCROOGE (2024)
This is another one for the holiday horror page! If you ate up all the direct-to-DVD movies that followed the slasher revival at the end of the 90s, you should find this basic holiday slasher enjoyable enough.
It opens with a fun kill, including a Christmas gift left on a doorstep, a chase through a house filled with holiday lights, and a killer dressed as evil Ebenezer.
Damn, Evil Ebenezer should have been the name of the movie.
Next, we get treated to a photo shoot involving two Santa hunks. Yay. One of the guys is the photographer’s boyfriend, and they’re heading to a 10-year college reunion at a mansion.
When the group gathers, there’s plenty of talking and drama as we learn that the main girl’s boyfriend committed suicide back in college while they were working on a production of A Christmas Carol. Is there any question that the killer’s motive has everything to do with that production?
Sure, it’s cheesy, but as a throwback to late 90s slashers, that’s how it should be. There are plenty of sleek kills, dark secrets revealed (mostly that basically every girl in the group was hot for the main girl’s boyfriend), holiday spirit, and chase scenes that culminate in a very long cat and mouse final act. It’s not super scary, but it’s definitely a good one to put on in the background each holiday season while you’re decking your halls.
DOWN BELOW (2024)
The writer and director of this film is also the star. Although he scored some familiar faces for cameos—Eric Roberts, Bai Ling, Doug Jones—this is a very low budget, surreal movie in washed out sepia tone that is more about horror imagery than any actual horror story. It’s also kind of hard to comprehend.
It’s a shame, because the opener is intriguing. It’s Christmas Day 1999, but don’t get your hopes up, because this is not a Christmas horror movie at all after this segment. Anyway, a preacher giving a sermon has his little bastard child assistant turn on gas while he dons a gas mask and kills all the parishioners. His eyes also turn demon black. Intriguing, indeed.
After that, the film moves to present day and focuses on a man registered as a sex offender who insists he was framed and believes he can prove it. He teams up with a prostitute who has visions of the past massacre. The detective who worked on the sex offender case is also going through some stuff of his own.
Was the main guy the child assistant from the beginning? Was he a victim of pedophilia himself? Is he possessed by the same demon as the preacher? It’s a mystery, and the film seems intent on guaranteeing its stays that way. There’s weird sexual stuff, visions of someone in a gas mask, and lots of talk to develop the main character somewhat, but there is very little in the way of actual plot or cohesion. The fricking gas mask person doesn’t even go around killing people. Bummer.
SCISSORS (2024)
Running just 64 minutes long, this clown killer slasher is one you watch simply for the creepy music, old school 80s horror lighting, vicious kills, and loads of boobs, many of them huge (if you’re into that sort of thing).
It’s pretty simple. Scissors the killer clown is caught…then escapes. A blonde woman is having nightmares about him. She and her friends appear to all be sex workers.
The girls show off their tits. Scissors comes around and stabs them.
The action moves to a hospital for the second half. I totally guessed what the twist would be at the end, and I’m assuming most horror veterans will.
