3 out of 5

Directed by: Grant Harvey, Steve Hoban,  Brett Sullivan

Well, it’s no Trick ‘R’ Treat, but it’s nice to have another horror holiday anthology with its heart in the right place.  That heart is a willingness to gore it up, to forego jump scares for creeps, and to just get goofy.  And, uniquely, while many anthologies – this one included – use a framing device for their tales, CHS tries to go a couple of steps further by not only looping little details through that tie each story’s characters together, but also chops them up and plays them all out at the same time, shuffling us between each tale like different plot threads.  While the Ebert review suggests this kills the pacing, I actually thought it worked out well, as the bits are somewhat anti-climactic, and having them all play out into one long anti-climax makes it more tolerable – and also makes the ultimate conclusion (to the framing bit) a resounding win instead of one high to counter a runtime of ups and downs.

I’m not sure who handled which story, but for one director, we have what seems to be a spin on the ol’ shaky cam pick-off-the-teens tale, three junior reporters breaking into a closed-down school’s basement to film the scene of a grisly double (suicide?).  The door locks behind them, of course, and then spooky things start to happen.  The look of this vignette is perhaps the most bland of the three, limiting itself to blues and darkness, but it develops at a much more mature pace than one would think: the kids act normally, not oversexed or overly cruel to one another, and there’s no freakout moment where they turn and blame everyone else for the craziness.  We don’t get much in the way of explanation, but there’s a nice building sense of dread to the way things play out, even if it has nothing to do at the end but unlock the door.

Second we have the best looking of the three, a story of a husband and wife taking their kid to chop down a tree… from the wrong forest.  Pish-poshing a ‘no trespassing’ sign, the kid disappears momentarily, and when found, something is off.  The kid plays this part to a T, giving demon stares and a hauntingly inhuman performance, while the husband and wife effectively work the balanced script to peel back the layers on their relationship.  It accomplishes a lot in a little while, with beautiful cinematography and a camera that knows how to be both warm and cold when needed.  The wrap up is, again, a little hasty, but the makeup effects and reveals are incredibly effective.

Lastly, a bickering family comes into contact with the anti-Santa, Krampus.  The look of this is perhaps the least stylized of the three, and doesn’t slot into a particular genre at first, as its just biding its time for its creature-feature reveal, which is worth it.  Out of the three, this vignette is the one played most for laughs, and due to that, the generic silliness of the family feels acceptable.

This doesn’t account for the frame of William Shatner’s lonely X-Mas radio jockey, doing an excellent drunk impression, and the hilarious over-gore of cutaway scenes to Santa in his workshop after its been infested with zombie elves.  Both of these bits are perfect breaks in the occasionally plodding build-ups of the three main tales, and the latter has a payoff that’s a perfect punchline to the movie.

So there’s really not much new under the sun here for horror fans, but the flick merits enough smiles and has enough quirk to give it a pass as a regular holiday view, especially as a background entertainer for that boring Xmas party you’re planning to throw.