MOVIE REVIEW: Nightmare on 34th Street

Nightmare on 34th Street is a horror anthology movie. It starts pretty well with an enjoyable title sequence and score and even the opening wraparound scene has some promise but sadly the film fails to execute on its own premise.

The wraparound opening has a masked killer ask if the off camera character in the scene (and the audience) want to hear a Christmas story. With that cold opening we move right into the first of several tales of terror. Unfortunately we are not given any connective tissue between said stories until more than halfway into the film and by that time in this two hour long movie you kinda forget all about the opening sequence.

By the time you get to the finish you can see how everything fits together but unfortunately the filmmakers don’t consider the effect the opening story has on the film. The wraparound is played very straight, setting one sort of tone (even though the scene is brief) but the segment that follows is quick schlocky with what I can only imagine is purposely over the top “bad” acting. It’s only much later in the film that you discover that this part of the film is actually a film within a film.

This could have been a very clever bit if handled differently but the opening presents this as the first story being told to you by the masked killer in the opening only to have the movie refute this idea later on. See, the film shifts focus to a rather unpleasant Santa telling a child horror stories while he’s laying in bed. Now this film is clearly at this point meant to be a black comedy but it has already created a dissonance in the mind of the viewer. I was left wrestling with what sort of film I was watching while trying to keep up with the stories.

In a typical horror anthology it’s easy to bounce from tone to tone per story but that initially opening combined with evil Santa also playing this more straight than way over the top causes one to struggle a bit with how one should view the movie. It becomes wildly uneven. Another contributing factor is that some of the stories are connected to the wraparound and Santa while others are not. It creates a sort of competition for the viewer’s attention as they are forced to try and understand what elements of the film fit when within the disjointed narrative. It’s doing the work of the movie without having the satisfaction of films like Pulp Fiction or Momento where the broken narrative structure becomes a strength of the film and not a detriment.

These issues create glaring plot holes that just can’t be ignored. While does the wraparound killer have the exact same mask as a killer in one of the stories? How does Santa have a very messed up looking doll that appears in the film, within the film? It sadly never adds up. There are also so many dangling plot threads that are never really addressed. Now I can fill in those blanks and in some cases that’s fine when watching a film but its a film that has to be well planned out in advance.

Aside from the plot and structure issues the film is pretty well shot. The image is very clear and crisp and some attention is paid to setting up shots with dramatic lighting as you’d want in a horror movie but at other times the staging is quite pedestrian. I think part of the problem is that one director is working on this anthology and is trying his hand at various storytelling techniques. Some more successfully than others.

The acting is serviceable to pretty darn good, with those playing Krampus (uncredited as far as I could tell), Peter (Jude Forsey) and Santa (Pierce Stevens) being standouts. Stevens in particular gives a performance worthy of a much better film and I would have much preferred a movie built around his character. This film was his to steal and he made every moment of screen time count, bravo!

In the end this film is a bit of a mess. There are numerous errors that just cannot be ignored, not even for a bit of schlocky horror fun. I need at least some consistent internal logic and I’m not finding that here. This is not the worst movie I’ve watched but I won’t be revisiting it nor can I recommend it unless one is just curious.

SCORE:
1.5 out of 5

Coming this December from Wild Eye Releasing.

Starring:
Caroline Boulton, Lucy Pinder, Dani Thompson, Ewen MacIntosh, Andy Gatenby, Adam Greaves-Neal in a James Crow film, out 12/5 on digital.

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