Flickers on the Wall: I’m Dreaming of a Dread Christmas

With the winter holiday season coming to an end, it is time for an indie, fantastical Christmas, short film roundup.  Yes, Christmas.  I’d love to add a Kwanzaa film to the mix but has anyone seen one?  Next year, I want at least one pagan solstice flick.  Are you listening filmmakers?  This year, I’d settle for four or five noteworthy works, but the cinematic landscape has been as barren as December in Wyoming. 

Not that the festival circuit has been completely devoid of men in red suits, but nearly so.  So when the theaters let me down, it’s time to turn to the Internet.  Short film has blossomed in that series of tubes, or perhaps it’s better to say spread, like a mildly attractive weed.  Anyone with a camera and a computer has tossed something online, and the holidays offer fertile ground for works that couldn’t, and probably shouldn’t, sprout in rougher times.  Ignoring the tons of rubbish does not leave gems but rather cute little jokes that are worth your time to watch, though not the time to discuss at the water cooler.

Atom.com is the net’s finest repository of better than average short films.  Faint praise indeed, but some praise is better than none at all.  Once upon a time, Atom was a resource for all things cinematic and brief, but uncertain economic times have narrowed its scope to comedies.  Just as well, since comedies work better for the low budget filmmaking the web is known for.  Living up to its reputation, Atom delivers a stocking filled with amusing but forgettable shorts for the holidays.  The high points include Xtreme Biography: Santa Claus (4:53 min. Director: Aaron Priest; Writers: J.D. Shapiro & Aaron Priest) A parody of the celebrity bio, it shows us Santa’s interest in ho’s and showing off his sack.  The jokes rely on the dichotomy of a wholesome Christmas and street sex. You’ll laugh, particularly at the elf interviews, and then it will fade from your memory

Twas (2:46 min. Writer/director: Michele Remsen) is a one panel cartoon.  It is cruel as the best are while displaying what can best be described as “blunt” parenting.  If you spend two and a half minutes gazing at a good cartoon when you find one, then this will entertain.

Modern Day Jesus: Santa vs. Jesus (5:04 min. Director: Oren Kaplan; Writers: Avi Rothman & Oren Kaplan) has the funniest premise.  Julie brings her new boyfriend, Jesus Christ, home for Christmas, but her ex, Kris Kringle, is already there, impressing the relatives.  It has a few moments of real humor, but the poor thing is doomed from the start.  South Park has mined the Santa vs. Jesus concept for all it’s worth, and that competition is too fierce.     

Beck Underwood changes the tone from painful to dark at creepychristmas.net for his Creepy Christmas Film Festival.  Beck has created an Advent calendar that no one will see in his first grade classroom.  Twenty-five little windows open to reveal 25 twisted images, filled in many cases with broken dolls.  The festival brings those images into the motion picture, or stop-motion picture world with 25 filmmaking teams producing 25 very short shorts (give or take; December 21 is a continuation of December 19), one to be opened each day. Many of the best works of art come from artists who’ve had some restraint put upon them, but Beck may have pushed the issue too far.  There is a sameness to a majority of the pieces.  Plots are hard to come by, as are themes.  Call them tone poems, without the poetry.  Since they average a minute and a half, they are all worth a gander, but after the sixth or seventh experimental mangled doll film, you may be ready for Doris Day’s Christmas Memories.  There are a few exceptions.  Of the wholly animated works, the standout is Aurelio Voltaire’s X-Mess Detritus (December 18^th’s entry).  Known for his humorous Gothic music, Voltaire has been animating since he put on his first pair of black pants.  His style shows a fluidity lost on lesser stop-motion animators without lacking that strange, unreal magic inherent in the form.  X-Mes Detritus invokes Edward Gorey as Gerard Way (of My Chemical Romance) narrates this parable of proper Christmas giving. 

The other compelling works are The Lighthouse - December 6^th (9 min. Director: Michael Vincent) and A Night Before Christmas (December 24^th).  Both primarily live action and considerably longer than their brethren.  

In The Lighthouse, a woman, filled with an undefined dread, accepts the proposal of a man who seems to have a brighter view of life.  They move into a lighthouse, where the chill night air is more than physical.

The Lighthouse slips from stark reality to a dream world of loss and despair without ever showing where the universe went so horribly wrong.  Time is a loose concept, and it is not clear when, or why, the events in the film take place, only that they have, and that they stick with you, clutching at your heart in a most unpleasant way.  I watched it three times trying to make up my mind whether it was a ghost story.  I haven’t decided. 

A Night Before Christmas is a recitation of Clement Moore’s poem, though I doubt he’d considered a box full of eyes as one of the parcels in Santa’s bag.  It is read by a child, and children are the lone occupants of the house.  Why are children so incredibly creepy?  Marry Harron is the director of American Psycho, and her experience shines through with precise shots merging the joy and otherworldly nature of youth.

All of this year’s yuletide offerings drift from light family fare, none more so than the season’s real find, Treevenge (15 min. Director: Jason Eisener).  Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez’s and Quentin Tarantino’s loving tribute to the “B-movies” of their youth, charmed viewers not only with its two inset features, but with four faux trailers for films that probably wouldn’t be much good, but sure look it in three-minute ads.  Many, myself among them, cling to those trailers as the diamonds in an uneven but thoroughly enjoyable mishmash.  For American viewers who don’t hang out on YouTube, that’s all she wrote.  But for Canadians, there is another: Hobo with a Shotgun is the fifth Grindhouse trailer. Shot with speed, energy, and a disregard for good taste, it won Robert Rodriguez’s SXSW Grindhouse Trailers contest.

Taking time from his plan to expand Hobo to a feature length exploitation epic, Eisener created an examination into the plight of trees in Treevenge.  Let’s face it: while we all enjoy our Christmas feasts, millions of trees are suffering.  Ripped from their homes by madmen with chainsaws, separated from their saplings, and sold into slavery, Christmas trees have no advocates and no hope.  That is, until now.  When oppressed people (or vegetables) are ignored by the world, they must rise up themselves to take their freedom by force of arms or leafs.  Ah, it is a stirring moment.  And a really gory one.

Treevenge is a loving tribute to every blood-soaked horror exploitation film that graced the ‘70s.  It isn’t a series of jokes, but one huge one that doesn’t let up, though the viewers’ laughter will be intermittent.  There has to be someplace to scream or make that “ewww” sound so appropriate when eyes are gouged out.  This soon-to-be classic is making the festival rounds, hitting Sundance in January.  Get out there and join the Christmas Tree Revolution, before you find yourself on the wrong end of a pointy branch.