Hanukkah (2019)

As the movie says, “we need more Jewish horror films”, so we have this now.  But I’m gonna come right out and say this isn’t very good.  I appreciate what it’s trying to achieve but it falls really short of attempting to establish a holiday horror classic in the vein of Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine or even cult favorites like Silent Night, Deadly Night.

One huge problem is there isn’t much of a story.  The son of a serial killer, dubbed the Hanukiller by the media, grows up to take over where his father left off.  He seems to murder at random though and doesn’t only target who he deems to be bad Jews.  Other than that it’s your usual group of partying teens hanging out and getting picked off.

And these kids are some of the most obnoxious I’ve ever come across in a slasher picture.  They constantly bicker with each other over petty bullshit and spit out asinine jokes.  They’re hateful, thoughtless and uninteresting.  Plus they look like they range in age from teenager to middle aged and some have Russian accents and I don’t understand these people.

On top of this the filmmakers cranked up the debauchery.  There’s a ton of nudity and gore.  It’s all for entertainment’s sake and doesn’t necessarily feed into the infinitesimal story.  And some of the shit is torture porn which I’m not a fan of.  At the same time this is an area where they spent some money because those effects look pretty good.  There’s one gag in particular that’s sorta clever where the killer cuts off the top of a neo-Nazi’s skull (which has a tattoo of a swastika on it), peels off the skin, cleans it up and wears it as a kippah.

While that one idea is incredibly gruesome at least it’s a dark twist on something Jewish which the movie doesn’t take enough advantage of.  One of the most glaring examples is the generic title.  But I’ll give them credit for a few things like the badass looking boney menorahs, keeping the killer in the shadows so his brimmed hat and long trench coat give off an ominous vibe (and makes him look like The Undertaker), spinning a dreidel right before dispatching a victim and carving the scar of David into a corpse’s chest.  There’s also a part where the killer skins someone alive to remove their tattoos so the body becomes acceptable for burial in a Jewish cemetery.  Now I’m not Jewish so I’m sure there are a lot of other nods that went right over my head.

For being such a low budget movie they managed to attract some names to be in it.  PJ Soles (Halloween, Carrie), Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Charles Fleischer (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Zodiac), Dick Miller (Gremlins, The Terminator) and Sid Haig (The Devil’s Rejects, Foxy Brown) all make appearances.  This was Miller and Haig’s final film with Haig also producing.  He’s almost unrecognizable here though because he lost an insane amount of weight due to illness towards the end of his life.  He probably gives the best performance in the film as the Hanukiller and it’s a non-verbal one to boot.

Additionally Kane Hodder (stunts: Friday the 13^th Part VII, Demolition Man) gets a stunt credit and Harry Manfredini (Friday the 13^th) gets a music credit.  Eben McGarr used his connections as a horror event coordinator to secure all this well known talent and get the movie made.  It’s strange to me that this guy is such a horror fan because the film feels like it was done by someone who was told what slasher movies are like but hadn’t actually seen one before.  I think it goes beyond lack of filmmaking experience.

Sadly this isn’t the defining Jewish horror picture that I hoped it would be based on the premise and the poster.  It’s surprisingly aimless considering the relatively simple goal the filmmakers were aiming for.  It also has insufferable characters and shows off too much nasty carnage for my taste.  The prize is still up for grabs if anyone wants to tackle this category.