Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 51/52 | Christmas Horror
The woods — ice and decay intermingle in the blue-green tones. A car drives by. Inside, teenage Casey listens to her half-siblings, Miranda and Paulie, chatter while mother Elaine and step-father Jonah answer the children’s questions. They arrive at Aunt Chloe’s house, where young Nicky and Leah run out, cheering, and welcome the family. Aunt Chloe and Uncle Robbie soon follow, smiles on their faces. Elaine pulls Paulie out of the car, and he is looking a little rough. He throws up, and Elaine believes it’s car sickness.
Inside, the kids open presents. Paulie jumps on the table, yelling for mommy. When Jonah picks him up, Paulie slaps him, and the family laughs it off. Outside, the camera observes Paulie’s blood-laced, phlegmy puke, which appears to contain larvae. Leah walks into the room, scared of Paulie, so Miranda takes Leah upstairs. In the bedroom, Leah coughs up some dark phlegm and wipes it off on her pillow. While she sleeps, the camera shows us bacteria in the phlegm violently attacking one another.
That night, while everyone sleeps, Paulie walks around, staring vacantly. The following day, Casey calls a friend to come pick her up for a party. She looks for the cat, Jinxie, but can’t find her. The kids set up a tent. Nicky is coughing up specks of blood. Jinxie’s collar hangs on a hook, and the floor is covered in a yellowish bile. Chloe brings out some hot drinks, and Paulie pushes the sled down the hill, which collides with Chloe’s Achilles tendon, causing her to spill the drinks everywhere. Miranda is horrified by the kids, who all seem to stare vacantly at her.
It seems the kids are sick with something that is giving them aggressive tendencies.
Where are the children? Where are my babies?!
One facet I like about this movie is how everyone seems to have their own thing going on. They aren’t complicated things, but they motivate each character, so they’re not all just standing around, waiting for the plot to kick in.
Thematically, the film seems to be exploring antivaxxers, giving the children some strange and violent disease as a result of their own “research.” Chloe asks Elaine if she read the article on MMR drugs she shared (a significant concern of antivaxxer Andrew Wakefield), and talks about homeschooling the kids. Jonah has this fixation on TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and wants to get everyone on board, carrying around his research to show Robbie. At dinner, Jonah talks about building kids’ immunity “naturally” rather than with all these “dodgy jabbings.”
Robbie and Jonah seem fixated on having more and more children while taking no effort to care for the ones they have. When Paulie first lets the sled down the hill, Jonah spanks Paulie and then blames Casey for not watching them. Chloe ignores Miranda’s concerns, promising her gold stars for doing things with the younger kids. Elaine is excited to have a weekend where she could potentially have sex with her China-obsessed husband.
Most upsetting is Uncle Robbie’s behavior with teenage Casey. He gives her some alcohol. He takes her on a walk outside to a private area where she can get cell reception. He also asks her not to call him “uncle.” Even Casey’s friend on the phone calls him her “pervy uncle.” Casey catches him smoking weed in the greenhouse, and he gladly shares. And that’s just the first 30 minutes of the movie. Of course, Casey responds positively to all the positive attention.
The movie is quite heavy-handed in how it builds tension, but I like how it creates a sense of chaos because kids are, well, chaos. Also, the gross stuff comes at unexpected times, keeping me on edge throughout. And you get to see some kids get their shit rocked, so that’s fun.
I get why some folks don’t like this movie. In some ways, I think it’s too subtle in its themes and very unsubtle in others. Also, the kids are consistently noisy. The parents’ behavior doesn’t always make much sense, but parents are often irrational when it comes to their kids.
Still, I was on the edge of my seat for most of the movie, which is more than I expected! And sub-90 minutes? Be still, my beating heart.
Stray Thoughts / Spoilers
- I cannot recognize the handheld console that Casey is playing. Could it be fake? I would love to know, though!
- Jonah’s gotta brush up on his Chinese. “我愛您” is too formal for your young daughter.