All the Creatures Were Stirring

source: All the Creatures Were Stirring

Discovered this at random breaking up my usual ReAnimator/Alien marathon for Xmas Eve. Loved this flick! Absolutely and unapologetically Indie. A fantastic telling of Christmas Horror Anthologies!

This 2018 horror anthology was nothing extraordinary, and it is not really one that I can recommend that you waste your time, money or effort on. And it is definitely not a movie that will be a Christmas time horror classic, that's for sure. The stories told in "All the Creatures Were Stirring" felt mediocre and half-hearted at best. In fact, it was so mundane and tedious that I gave up halfway through the movie. I just couldn't take anymore of the torment. The acting in the movie was adequate, although the actors and actresses were struggling with the fact of having a lack of proper script, storyline and interesting characters. So it was a losing uphill battle for sure. There really isn't any continuity or structure to the stories, so it is essentially just a random mash of collected stories told in a less than entertaining manner. This is one of the biggest flaws that this anthology had to it. In between the various stories is some atrocious theatrical performance that just makes you cringe. "All the Creatures Were Stirring" is an anthology that came and went without leaving anything of a lasting impression. And I have no interest in returning to finish the last half of the movie, simply because it completely failed to entertain me, and much less captivate me. My rating for "All the Creatures Were Stirring" is a mere three out of ten stars, solely based on the production value and the effort they put into that.

An awkward Christmas Eve date leads a non-dating couple into a strange theater where they're forced to confront an assemblage of odd and scary Christmas tales -- from a boring office party livened up by murder to stalkers, demons, aliens and more. All the Creatures Were Stirring offers a portmanteau take on holiday horror. The first full-length film written and directed by David Ian and Rebekah McKendry, this tale starts in the theater, where Max and Jenna go on their first date, a production of a play with the same name as this movie. Each of the tales takes on a common theme -- an office party, last minute shopping, hating the holidays -- and spin them into a darker theme. Here are the stories: The Stockings Were Hung: An office Secret Santa (shot in the warehouse of Blumhouse) turns into a game of death. Dash Away All: A man is locked out of his car on Christmas Eve and is trying not to give his wife any ammunition to say he's ruining Christmas. However, when he meets a van full of two girls and an ancient evil, he'll wish that he'd stayed in the store. All through the House: A neighbor that hates Christmas continually sees how he's going to die by the end of the night. Arose Such a Clatter: A reindeer gets his revenge. In a Twinkling: Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) shows up in this tale of aliens trying to understand the holidays. The stories -- other than The Stockings Were Hung and Dash Away -- never really seem to go anywhere once their premise is set up. Even the wraparound gives no real resolution. There's the setup and the sort of ending, but like so many of the modern crop of anthology films, the whole is nowhere near the sum of its parts. Filmmakers should look back to Amicus Productions, where each story often felt strong enough to be its own film. This was a fine but of background music while I was finishing holiday preparations, but in no way was satisfying. Consider it the appetizer before you watch a much better holiday horror film.

This quintet of Christmas horror stories not surprisingly proves to be something of a mixed bag. Said stories are as follows: A Christmas office party goes nightmarishly awry (tense and gory), a man's last minute shopping ordeal turns out to be even worse than expected (excellent), a variant on "A Christmas Carl" (predictable, but still enjoyable thanks to Jonathan Kite's delightfully snarky performance as the mean Scrooge-like grinch main character Chet), a vengeful roadkill deer (a cool premise that's undermined by a lackluster execution), and a crafty homage to 50's black and white alien invasion fare that plays like a funky lost episode of "The Twilight Zone." While the concept of having all the stories acted out on stage in pantomime in the wraparound segments rates as an inspired offbeat touch, the twist ending of the wraparound proves to be really lame and dissatisfying. Fortunately, writers/directors Rebekah and David Ian McKendry cleverly cover various aspects of the noel season, maintain a snappy pace throughout, and keep the gore to a refreshing minimum. Cameron Cameron's crisp widescreen cinematography makes nifty use of split screen. A rather flawed, but overall fun fright flick.

Christmas horror. The shorts was ok. The ending was just terrible. They had no way to close it up. Still I had fun watching.

This Xmas horror anthology is really good and fun, also quite original, please don't believe all the hateful reviews. Simply watch the movie yourself. All the "don't waste your time" , "I want 90 mins of my life back" stuff in the reviews is pure nonsense.

They did this film for fun ,it shows its not gonna win any prizes but it has a twillight zone vibe that makes you go through the whole thing .In the end its an ok weird horror comedy .

This was one I had been anticipating for along while and after seeing Bloody Disgustings review witch pretty much trashed the film, I really knew I had to give it a watch. And sadly I was a little disappointed. The movie only runs at 80 minutes and contains five stories, all having something to do with Christmas in one way or the other! As normal with anthologies the tales are a mixed bag most suffering from the runtime. The first is a saw-esqe story of a group of office workers forced to play a deadly game, its sadly wasted on a half assed rushed ending. There's also a bizarre tale in which a reindeer gets revenge, and one that plays like a horror redo of A Christmas Carol, the best however is one in which a man stranded in a deserted parking lot meets a very strange van with two girls inside and that's not all. Overall it's ok but nothing really what I was hoping for.

All the Creatures Were Stirring: Written and directed by David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry This was not the movie we started the night out with. The movie I was originally trying to watch was something called Christmas Presence, a bizarre English slasher film with some of the most morally repugnant obnoxious characters you ever laid eyes on. You know perfect slasher movie fodder. For some reason or other, I couldn't bring myself to spend more than 7 minutes with them. It was too much for my psyche to bear. I turned it off and turned this movie on instead. An anthology movie with a Christmas theme to most of the stories. It had one of those posters that catches your eye right off the bat. What's this?! A tiny monster exiting a Christmas ornament like some kind of egg. Well alright then I'm on board. Lies! All lies! No such thing exists in the entirety of the movie. It's like being in a video store back in the 90s searching through the horror movie section being bamboozled by the cover art. I sadly fell for it. I ventured into the community theater on Christmas Eve for what stories it may tell. None of the stories really had any impact. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be scared or laughing. I did laugh at it. So I'm going to assume that this is meant to be a comedy. It's funny in the way things play out in an oddly stilted way. I laughed at the stuff in the community theater a bunch. You go from the serious bloodshed portion to the same thing being reenacted by two actors on a blank stage in the most over the top way possible. This was a very cheap looking movie. I don't mean just low budget. I mean cheap. This is a difference. This is a cheap looking movie. I guess they spent all their money on the poster. You could have spared some for some good camerawork. We could have used some of this money for some decent makeup effects. None of the stories were all that good. The first one was a mixture of the Belko Experiment and Saw. This type of story has been handled by better filmmakers. We didn't need a fan film version of this with a Christmas flavor. The second story about the demon keepers was too long. It had some okay elements and the demon creature had a great design. The one doing a low budget version of A Christmas Carol made me roll my eyes. The one with the aliens visiting on Christmas and doing a Christmas dinner with this guy and his girlfriend. It's sort of weird. All the stories are very weird but not engaging. This is a very weak anthology movie. There is no story good enough to overcome the shabby structure. The poster is the best part of the movie. The rest of it was very meh. I can not recommend it. There are better Christmas related horror movies out there. I give it a D.