‘Unholy Night’: Tender and Gnarly in Equal Measure [Fantasia Review]

Debut filmmaker Michael Gabriele augurs the holiday season with Unholy Night, which is having its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Perhaps it’s serendipity, maybe an opportunity, since Gabriele’s feature is interestingly aligned with Sebastian Vanicék’s Evil Dead Burn, which was released earlier this month. Despite the push, few showed up for Vanicék’s French Extremity take on the Necronomicon mythos, though here’s hoping Unholy Night avoids a similar fate. While its DNA is trés Evil Dead, Gabriele’s deft, earnest touch deserves a look.

After a cold open that calls to mind Vanicék’s climactic long take of Deadite chaos, we’re introduced to Gino (Marc Bendavid), the black sheep of his Canadian-Italian family, as they prepare for Christmas dinner. Gino wants to cube the fruit, everyone yells at him, and he endures an evening of jabs and slights about his aspirations, his appearance, his interests, onward and onward. The familial horror starts before the dead even arrive.

They do arrive, however, in the form of the family’s long-deceased matriarch (Jacqueline Robbins). The family encounters her in the kitchen mid-dinner, and immediately the evening spirals into chaos. She starts battering those around her with saucepans, and in a gnarly kill, jams a wooden spoon down a poor sap’s throat. The dead are back, and they’re ready to kill.

Aligned with Sam Raimi’s horror/comedy ethos, Gabriele manages frequent laughs without undercutting the severity of the threat. In effect, when the dead feel they haven’t been sufficiently honored, they return from the grave to seek vengeance. Gino, his family, and his past flame, Rene (), endeavor to survive the night while seeking the means to stop Gino’s family from rising and then rising once again.