Color, 2022, 91 mins. 42 secs.
Directed by Casper Kelly
Starring Andrea Laing, Justin Miles, Hannah Alline, Sean Hankinson, Danielia Maximillian, Skye Passmore, Tordy Clark, Brendan Patrick Connor
Dekanalog (Blu-ray) (US RA HD) / WS (1.78:1) (16:9)

Just when you thought every horror movie stunt out there had been pulled, Adult Swim -- already known for its genre-stretching experimentation and frequent forays into disturbing material -- sprang a wild one on viewers in December of 2022. First broadcast after a season finale of Rick and Morty and then a word-of-mouth favorite on what was then HBO Max in the same month, this was presented as another offering in the series of lengthy holiday videos designed as background material (though with a sinister twist or two in the case of platforms like Shudder). This one was something else though, with its opening two minutes of a stationary, crackling fireplace then giving way into a completely bonkers 90-minute horror film that mashes at least three different subgenres together into one head-spinning whole. The film was shot in secret in Atlanta and was the brainchild of writer-director Casper Kelly, co-creator of the channel's Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell and the short-form masterpiece Too Many Cooks (which gets a quick, amusing shout out here, too). This seasonal shocker is really best experienced as cold as possible, so the synopsis below will be intentionally short and vague to keep it as surprising as possible. Even then, you might as well stop reading here and just snap up a copy if you haven't seen it yet. If you have, well, you already know what a unique experience it is.

At a secluded cabin in the South, its owner is cleaning up the place while the latest renters are out only to be visited and murdered by a pair of psychotic murderers, a masked man referred to at one point as "Pleatherface" (Connor) and his mother (Clark). In a half-hour single shot, we pull back from the mayhem as seen through the video camera of a pair of renters, Zoe (Laing) and Alex (Miles), with the latter's marriage proposal interrupted by a sheriff and his deputy warning about a killer in the vicinity. It also turns out that the fire they're burning contains a log they chopped from an off-limits hanging tree once used to kill slaves, and the area's grim history goes all the way back to a horrific incident during the pre-Civil War era and more recently involves reputed alien abductions. The evening takes another turn when four more people show up claiming they rented the cabin which has apparently been double booked. Now they've all eaten edibles that could kick in at any moment, which means they're all stuck together for the night. Then the mayhem really starts.

If you're familiar with the Adult Swim modus operandi, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that this one takes some severe narrative turns while balancing dark humor, surrealism, and very strong horror including some gory kills, disgusting use of pimento cheese, and at least one taboo-pushing scene involving time travel. Given all the elements at play here, it's remarkable that this not only coheres as a story in the end but works as a disturbing study of how past brutality can morph and fester through generations in more ways than one. The actors were all pulled from the local Atlanta scene and all play things completely straight no matter how absurd the situation might be, which makes the shocks more potent when they hit.

This wouldn't seem like a strong candidate for a physical media release given it was designed to function as a piece of cinematic subterfuge around the holidays, but thankfully Dekanalog has come through with a stacked Blu-ray release that answers pretty much any question you might have about this mysterious production. The film looks great as you'd expect and comes with DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 English audio options (with optional English SDH subtitles), both of which sound excellent with the 5.1 having a lot of fun once the supernatural stuff kicks in. The film also comes with two audio commentaries, the first with actors Laing, Miles, Hannah Alline, and Sean Hankinson, recorded during the actors' strike and covering the amusing encounters friends had watching this, the original idea to have the fireplace video part last two hours(!), the challenge of doing that half-hour opening shot, and being rambunctious all over Georgia. The second commentary has Kelly, Laing, editor Nick Gibbons, and producer Matt Foster chatting about the production details including tips on making movie logs, the evolution of the concept into the crazy beast we now have, the execution of the gore effects, the joys of getting a perfect scream, the methods of getting the voice right for the film's... uh, wooden star, and much more. Also included are a real yule log video (one hour on the dot) with a little surprise at the end (don't bother doing what it says), as well as select scene commentaries with Kelly and actress Jessica Fontaine (8m3s), Kelly and Clark (9m32s), Kelly with effects artists Shane Morton and Oliver Kasiske (8m2s), costume designer Karen Freed (6m17s), Connor (6m6s), actress Danielia Maximiillian (9m11s), actor Michael Reagan (4m50s), and actor Charles Green (4m21s), who steals every second of his screen time as... well, a character he likens to an imp or Rumpelstiltskin. Finally you get an "FX Show-&-Tell" featurette (11m2s) with Kelly, Morton, and Kasiske in the shop showing off great creature costumes from this and their other projects, explaining how the log effects were done, and demonstrating how trypophobia played a role in one of the creations. The disc also comes with a booklet featuring a great Grady Hendrix essay about the film as an example of one that learned the right lesson from The Blair Witch Project and a tragic meditation on repeating the same destructive mistakes over and over, plus a text interview with Kelly by Rodney Ascher covering the creative process of coming up with the film along with a slew of amusing digressions.

Reviewed on November 12, 2024