'Bin Special: Falling for Christmas

 

I almost listed this as a Bargain Bin Review, but would that be fair? It just came out, and it’s not like it was quietly released on some obscure platform. It’s out on Netflix and getting a surprising amount of media attention.

But this is Netflix making a Hallmark Christmas movie. Starring Lindsay Lohan. Sounds like Christmas is coming early for the Internet…

 

Directed by Janeen Damian, 2022, 95 minutes, Rated TV-PG
And the award for best Comedy/Horror Hallmark Christmas Movie goes to…

 

Meet Sierra Belmont (Lindsay Lohan). We know she’s a spoiled rich girl by the remote-controlled curtains in her suite, the hotel-appointed entourage and the slo-mo entrances she’s granted when she enters a room. Daddy (Jack Wagner) run a hotel empire and is eager to have his little girl join him in the family business as “Vice President of Atmosphere” which, to Sierra’s credit, even she realizes is a b.s. position. She also has a very famous, very over-the-top influencer boyfriend named Tad. Indeed, it appears she has it all.

 

Tad snowmobiles Sierra to the tippy top of a secluded mountain summit and proposes. She’s flustered, and when the giant ring Tad just gave her slips off her finger Sierra falls off the side of the mountain, tumbling ass over end and eventually slamming head-first into a tree. Looney Tunes-style. All that’s missing are the cartoon birds flying around her head.

No worries, she’s fine. In fact, Sierra is promptly rescued by Jake Russell (Glee’s Chord Overstreet), who runs the small, family-owned lodge in town. Jake is Every Hallmark Christmas Movie Love Interest Ever: he’s a widow with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, an entire wardrobe of flannel shirts and an adorable little muppet who says things like, “Haven’t you heard, Dad? Christmas is the time of miracles!”

At the hospital, Sierra is diagnosed with a mild concussion and soap opera-grade amnesia. She’s so high maintenance that “Sarah” is promptly released from the hospital to stay at Jake’s lodge. I can’t imagine that’s a standard hospital polic—

Wait, is this a Christmas-themed remake of Overboard?

HOLYCRAPITIS! We get a number of montages of Sarah/Sierra attempting and failing to do such simple tasks as make a bed, start a load of laundry and flip pancakes. Her ineptitude is stunning. Along the way, Sarah/Sierra bond with the little muppet and shares longing looks with Jake.

If you’re wondering why no one shows up looking for Sierra, she’s wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, Daddy is away on business and she told the entourage that she was to be undisturbed before heading up the mountain. As for Tad, he’s having his own ordeal: after being lost in the woods for hours (“What kind of crap forest doesn’t have a cell tower!”), he ends up in a tiny ice cabin with a mountain man whose truck craps out so they have to hike a few days to reach civilization. Think Tad will show up at a really inopportune time and pull Sierra way from Jake in front of the entire town?

It may be hypocritical for me to drag R.I.P.D. last week for being formulaic, but in the case of Falling for Christmas, being formulaic is a feature, not a bug. Yes, everything plays out the way you’d expect – but cartoonishly so. The town can’t just have a tree-lighting, it must be overseen by the mayor with the entire town in attendance, a full band, and fireworks. Sarah/Sierra is extra inept, the muppet is extra earnest, and Tad is extra… extra. Even bit characters get a chance to be absurd (“Is this thing safe?” one man asks about a horse-drawn sleigh, as if it were a rickety unicycle with a jet engine). It’d be tempting to say you’re laughing at the characters, but it all plays so tongue-in-cheek that I have to believe everyone was in on the joke.

The possible exception might be Santa. Yes, THE Santa Clause is heavily implied to be in attendance, largely to do some possibly magical finger-wiggling and to mug the camera like a madman:

 

I may have yelped in terror at one point.

Anyway, Falling for Christmas is idiotic, cheesy and completely ridiculous. I loved it.

 

* * * *

 

 

'Bin Special: Werewolf by Night

 

Directed by Michael Giacchino, 2022, 53 minutes, TV-14
“And woe to the monster who finds itself among them.”

 

What is this? Anything out of the Industrial MCU Complex is clearly not Bargain Bin material, it’s too new for a Modern Cult Classic, it’s not even a feature film. But damn, that trailer!

With this Halloween special, the MCU officially dips its toes into the horror realm of its comics line. Yes, that is a thing. A long-running thing, which includes such characters as:

• Ghost Rider
• Blade
• Morbius the Living Vampire (meme and all)
• Frankenstein’s Monster (God bless public domain)
• Man-Thing, who should not be mixed up with
• Manphilbian
• N’Kantu the Living Mummy (yes, seriously)
• And the headliner of this feature, Werewolf by Night

 

So what’s Werewolf by Night’s deal? He’s… uh… (checks notes) yeah, he’s a werewolf.

Werewolf by Night kicks off with the news that Ulysses Bloodstone, famed monster hunter, has died. His widow, Verussa, summons a collection of fellow monster hunters – including Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Verussa’s estranged stepdaughter, Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly) – to Bloodstone Manor. The group is not so much there to pay their respects to the late Ulysses as they are to compete for ownership of the coveted Bloodstone, a powerful gem that’s essentially a Junior Varsity Infinity Stone. To do that, they need to search the manor’s large maze (a standard fixture in these kind of old timey manors) to hunt down a dangerous monster trapped within its walls. To say more would be to ruin the story, but needless to say twists and turns ensue.

The story is solid, but what really makes this worth a watch is the overall feel of the feature. While the era of the story’s setting is left (purposefully, I imagine) vague, the aesthetics of Werewolf by Night leans heavily on the classic Universal monster movies. It’s all shadows and mood and crackling audio track – gorgeous. None of this to say that Werewolf by Night is toothless. Far from it, for this might be the MCU’s goriest entry to date – it’s just that the nastier bits of gore and violence are blunted in black and white (hence the TV-14 rating, which was a surprise to director Michael Giacchino).  

Werewolf by Night does move to color during its final minutes, which was actually a bit disappointing because I would have happily stayed in that classic horror aesthetic for a whole series of Marvel horror installments. Obviously, I have no idea what plans (if any) Marvel has for its horror properties. But hopefully they’ll do something, because it definitely feels like Marvel unlocked a fresh new wing of storytelling in the same way Guardians of the Galaxy unlocked cosmic stories – only  with a completely self-contained tale. I can’t help but feel this is exactly the kind of thing the MCU should do more often.