ALL THE CREATURES WERE STIRRING (2018)

 

(Directors/screenwriters: David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry)

Storyline

An awkward first date takes place during a strange and scary theater performance, each on-stage segment leading into a cinematic version of that segment.

Review

This 2018 Christmas-themed horror anthology film is a fun, worthwhile low-budget diversion from the grimmer aspects of the holidays.

“To All A Goodnight,” the wraparound story, involves Max and Jenna, a couple on their awkward first date on Christmas Eve. They attend an odd, terror-themed and sparsely attended theater performance, its staff rude and mute, and each anthological stage performance leading to a cinematic equivalent, and an unsurprising secret one of the awkward datemates holds. Diva Zappa, youngest daughter of musician Frank and Gail Zappa, played Actor 3.

The first stage act (“The Stockings Were Hung”) tells the tale of a corporate office Christmas gift exchange that turns deadly when unwrapped boxes reveal guns, a knife, and other dangerous objects as well as creepy phone calls from a mysterious tormentor.

In “Dash Away All,” a last-minute shopper─a married, thirty-something man─finds that his car, parked in an empty, late-night parking lot, won’t start. Then he sees a van with two young, intensely helpful and nervous women whose aid may or may not be beneficial to him.

“All Through the House” is an update of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, with a young man (Chet) being haunted by shadowy demons and a friendly, frustrated neighbor.

The fourth segment, “Arose Such a Clatter,” centers around a middle-aged driver who accidentally hits a deer while driving home on Christmas Eve─and discovers that it’s not just any deer that he killed, when he’s followed home by something or someone whose vision is red tinted (stalker POV!).

In “In A Twinkling,” Gabby (played by Constance Wu) surprises her friend Steve (Morgan Peter Brown) with a Christmas Eve visit and finds herself trapped with him in a black-and-white, 1950s holiday party with inhuman versions of their friends and theremin music playing in the background. I especially enjoyed this one, with its light, atypical-for-horror ending.

STIRRING is a fun, quirky and good film, with often fresh takes on the holiday spirit(s), good acting, and mostly effective pacing─the only lag in the movie is “All Through the House,” a slightly-updated-but-otherwise-flat retelling of Dickens’s famous Scrooge tale, and even that was not bad. The ending of “To All A Goodnight” is abrupt, something I did not mind, but I suspect many viewers may find its briefly glimpsed, not-surprising twist underwhelming. Otherwise, it's an entertaining flick, if you keep your expectations modest and light-hearted.