 |
| Courtesy of Warner Brothers Discovery |
Among its most studious content creators is
writer-producer-director Casper Kelly, best known for co-creating the series Your
Pretty Face is Going to Hell and especially the Adult Swim Informercials
episode Too Many Cooks.
Designed to look like an 80s sitcom replete with curtain calls, a hit
theme song and a Married with Children ensemble cast, the faux informercial
gradually turns sinister as a threatening bearded figure played by William
Tokarsky starts invading the sitcom which erupts into pandemonium.
Designed to look
like WPIX-TV’s 1966 The Yule Log Christmas special which simply
presented a fireplace with Christmas music playing on a television screen
before turning into the Adult Swim version of Evil Dead II, Adult
Swim Yule Log is one of the year’s most surprising and original horror movies
chock full of Easter eggs fans of the network will eagerly eat up. In theory there are loose connections and
shout outs to the viral Too Many Cooks video but even seasoned adult
swimmers will be surprised by the insane places this thing goes.
Young couple Zoe (Andrea Laing) and Alex (Justin Miles) are
vacationing in a cabin with Alex filming the fireplace intending to make a yule
log YouTube video. Their love lives are
interrupted initially by the local sheriff warning of a killer in the area but
soon after another group of vacationers show up unannounced with the guests conflicting
over the rental agreement ala the opening scenes of Barbarian.
Soon however someone dies mysteriously, and
then things get progressively weirder and more oddly demonic in form, turning
somehow into an even wilder surreal shape shifting monster than the Too Many
Cooks informercial that seemingly generated it in the first place. Trying to explain or describe what happens in
the remainder of this sneaky Twin Peaks infused viral horror movie is an
exercise in futility.
Rather than try and pick apart the calculated madness and
mayhem, let it be said Casper Kelly’s first feature-length effort as a
writer-director for what it aspires to be is exceedingly well made. Handsomely photographed in digital amid
effects-heavy green screen sequences and practical effects gore by Alex Allgood
(The Murder Podcast) with incidental music by Shawn Coleman designed to
either augment or contradict the proceedings onscreen, Adult Swim Yule Log aka
The Fireplace looks and sounds nice with just the right amount of
unrealistic effects to make it feel off kilter.
The ensemble cast, largely led by Andrea Laing who is ostensibly the
film’s scream queen, is generally solid and a chunk of the surreal comedy stems
from the actors playing it dead seriously.
--Andrew Kotwicki
