ADVENT (2024)

3 stars

Miracle Media. World Premiere at FrightFest Halloween 2024. UK digital 25 November

We all love an advent calendar – a countdown to Christmas with various treats behind each door (though back when I was kid it was one crappy cardboard affair with pictures behind each opening. No chocolate involved that’s for sure).

Richard Hill (Nicholas Vince), Professor of Folklore and Documentary Filmmaker, introduces the story and our lead Hayley (Rasina Pavlova), who desperately wants to be a social media influencer via her videos on YouTube on urban legends, which have rather low numbers. In an effort to increase her viewership, she hears of these advent calendars that are evil. Behind each door are challenges which you must carry out – come Christmas morning the devil will take your soul. So, disregarding this, she orders one off one of the more sketchy corners of the web, as she is skeptical of it’s powers and much to the amusement of the chap who helps shoot her vids Charlie (Cian Lorcan). At first the things she is expected to do are quite low key, but it isn’t long, of course, before things start to go supernatural.

The thing is Hayley isn’t necessarily the most stable of characters, as she is still recovering from the death of her Mum and living with her alcoholic father (Cory Peterson). The problem with the film though is that the narrative is slight, and ultimately leads to a disappointing denouement. Pavlova is fine as the troubled filmmaker, but the paucity of the script gives her little to play with. Throughout we get these interludes with Professor Hill, giving a potted history of this devilish device. Not much actually happens and if it wasn’t for these intercut near lectures, it would be a very short story – as it is it is only 76 minutes long. Blame for this must lay with Writer/Director Airell Anthony Hayles, who clearly has a thing for Christmas set tales having helmed WEREWOLF SANTA and SANTA’S GROTTO (both 2023) and is also Producer on the ‘in production’ ZOMBIE SANTA and VAMPIRE SANTA… bet you can’t wait!

Steve Kirkham