Xmas Week: A Christmas Nightmare (2001)

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock
Jingle bells chime in jingle bell time
Dancin' and prancin' in Jingle Bell Square
In the frosty air

What a bright time, it's the right time
To rock the night away
Jingle bell time is a swell time
To go glidin' in a one-horse sleigh

Giddy-up jingle horse, pick up your feet
Jingle around the clock
Mix and a-mingle in the jinglin' feet
That's the jingle bell rock

 

Do. Not. Watch. This. Movie.

If you do watch it, please let me know so I can drive to your house and slap you in the face. This movie is awful awful awful. When we have a fire next summer, I’m using this disc to start it.

Like some other “Christmas” horror movies, there is very little that is Christmas about A Christmas Nightmare. They flash dates on the screen from time to time (December 24, 2:13pm) like they’re Law and Order but that’s it. (pffft) The story goes something like this:

I slay me.

A man and woman are under protective custody and shipped out to a house in the middle of nowhere. Once they get there, strange things happen as the woman has visions and sees things upon touching various items within the house. Soon, a mystery begins to arise in the form of a brutal murder/suicide that happened 50 years prior in the very same house.

Something like that. I watched about 30 minutes of this movie until a voice in the back of my head said, “We’re done here,” and I fell asleep. I woke up 30 minutes later to discover that nothing had changed. The girl was STILL walking around touching things and having the same fucking visions. I forced through another 15 minutes of the same shit until I just gave up and fell asleep again. I woke up and it was 20 minutes into the beginning again. This shitty movie had gone full circle and started over again!

I didn’t even bother to go over it again, fast forward or not. I’m never watching this thing again. If this movie was normal speed, it’d probably be 45 minutes long. It's shot entirely in slowmo. Everything, EVERYTHING, has drama attached to it. From opening doors to walking briskly through the house, there HAS to be some element of drama.

AND WHERE THE FUCK IS CHRISTMAS?

If you’re making a Christmas Horror movie there’d better be a whole fucking lot of naked chicks getting strangled with Christmas lights and dudes getting thrown past stockings and lit on fire in fireplaces. THAT’S CHRISTMAS HORROR. This is just a stupid shit pile of fuckall masquerading around as something it is not. This movie is like the fruitcake of christmas movies. You get it but you'll be damned if you are going to eat it.

Filmmaker: I just made a really shitty movie, what am I going to do?

Other Guy: I think I saw a Christmas Tree in there somewhere.

Filmmaker: Yeah, it was in the house we broke into to film this thing. I kept it in there as background filler.

Other Guy: Here's what you do, slap some stupid Christmas title on it like, "A Christmas Nightmare", only less shitty, and then put some dates in there that make it seem the events in this movie are taking place over Christmas and you're good to go.

Filmmaker: GENIUS! But I don't have any snow in my movie.

Other Guy: Christmas in Mexico.

Filmmaker: GENIUS!

This movie isn't even the GOOD type of shit. I love shit movies. There’s always some little niche in there somewhere worth loving. Whether it be a bad angle, terrible dialogue, bad line delivery, stupid creatures, illogical decisions, crew members in the shot, SOMETHING! This movie has nothing noteworthy at all. All they had to do was get Clint Howard for a few hours and have him just wing dialogue and this movie would have won me over. But NOOOoooOOOO, nothing.

Sure, maybe something happened while I was asleep BOTH TIMES but I can assure you, nothing happened. Nothing worth anyone's time.

Apparently YouTube has it's shit together because they have refused to post a trailer or any clips. (God bless 'em) so instead enjoy the trailer for the infinitely superior The Nightmare Before Christmas because it's the only thing that seems to come up when you search for A Christmas Nightmare.