There
is something sinfully transgressive about Christmas horror movies, such as Silent Night, Bloody Night; Silent Night,
Deadly Night; and Silent Night,
Zombie Night, but they are maybe not so brilliantly original when it comes
to titles. In any case, it is weirdly compelling to watch slasher violence during
what is supposed to be a family holiday. Unfortunately, Craig Anderson does not
know when to stop. Instead of mere yuletide gore, he delivers an absolutist
pro-abortion access message early and often in Red Christmas
(trailer here),
which opens tonight in New York.
Apparently,
this film is set in Mississippi, New South Wales, where twentysome years ago,
there was a nasty bombing at an abortion clinic. As fate would have it, the
recently widowed Diane had just finished her procedure when the bomb went off,
resulting in utter bedlam. However, it turns out her fetus-baby-lump of
tissue-sacred human life was not sufficiently aborted. The mad bomber would
adopt the woeful Cletus, who will come looking for his birth mother after the
death of his surrogate father.
Naturally,
Cletus turns up just as Diane is about to open presents with her stoner second husband
Joe and her obnoxious, entitled grown children. The Bible-thumping,
cloak-wearing Cletus is out for either revenge and/or acceptance from his
mother. Frankly, he is probably has grounds to feel resentful, given the
presumed effects of the procedure on his long-term development, but he is a
fundamentalist, so that is evil enough for Anderson.
Have
you ever been to a Christmas party where some loudmouth won’t shut up about
Trump, Obama, W., or whoever? You know how everyone just agrees with him hoping
he’ll let it rest, but he can tell it isn’t sincere, so he gets even more
belligerent? This film is that guy. Seriously, just by making a Christmas
slasher movie, you’re already sort of desecrating one of the most sacred days
in the Christian calendar. To then proceed to imply all Evangelicals are
deformed homicidal maniacs is just kind of rude. It also interrupts the tension
and jump scares for countless interludes of eye-rolling.
Despite
all that, it is always nice to see Dee Wallace [Stone] back in another horror movie.
She is terrific as the no-nonsense Diane, but it doesn’t make sense that she
would have raised such self-centered, un-self-aware children. Regardless, she
develops some likably lived-in chemistry with Geoff Morrell as the wryly laidback
Joe.