Verdict
Summary
Overly simplistic and bare bones in terms of structure and delivery, 13 Slays till X-Mas adds just a bit of bitter nutmeg to the pantheon of seasonal horror anthologies, which seems to be gaining some momentum each year around this time, but unfortunately it just doesn’t have the bandwidth to create memorable stories.
Plot:
An anthology of holiday-themed horror.
Review:
It’s last call on Christmas Eve at the local dive bar where an assortment of losers, drunks, and jerks find themselves all daring each other to tell the scariest Christmas story they can come up with. 13 tales are conceived, each trying to top the last one, with each story only lasting a few minutes, some about crossroad deals with malevolent Christmas spirits, some about serial killers exchanging gifts with each other, and my favorite is when a little girl makes a wish to Santa for a new phone, but her snit older brother plays a Christmas record backwards, trying to conjure Santa’s evil twin brother … who shows up. By the time all the stories are told, there’s one last patron in the bar no one noticed who steps up to tell her story, which proves to be connected to each of the other patrons, who realize too late what horrors fate has in store for them all.
Overly simplistic and bare bones in terms of structure and delivery, 13 Slays till X-Mas adds just a bit of bitter nutmeg to the pantheon of seasonal horror anthologies, which seems to be gaining some momentum each year around this time, but unfortunately it just doesn’t have the bandwidth to create memorable stories. Most of them are over just as they’re getting interesting, and then it’s already on to the next one in a very rote fashion. My favorite, as I mentioned, involves the two kids and Santa’s evil brother, and this little episode had me howling with laughter because it’s so well delivered and executed that it had a unique charm all on its own. With 15 filmmakers involved, the quality of the shorts varies from terrible, to trite, to ironic, to confusing, and then with a few clever ones here and there. I wasn’t crazy about it on the whole, but perhaps if you watch it piecemeal over the course of a few nights like webisodes it might be more palatable.
Scream Team Releasing’s recent Blu-ray release of 13 Slays till X-Mas comes with a massive amount of bonus content, including faux trailers, making-of features, and enough going on to keep the fan busy for hours.
