ADULT SWIM’S YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT (2024)

New streaming on MAX!
Directed/Written by Casper Kelly.
Check out the trailer here!!

Zoe (Andrea Laing) survived a night of true insanity and horror when a flying, flaming yule log murdered all of her friends. Zoe believes she destroyed the killer log, but still carries around a fire axe for protection. Though she rushes back to work soon after her trauma, hoping to distract herself with work, she is fired after a meeting gone wrong and an account lost. Zoe decides to get away from it all with her friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson) to a Mexico beach, hoping it is far enough away from yule logs and anything Christmas-y. But on their way, Jakester crashes his car and wouldn’t you know it, they end up in a small town called Mistletoe. Like it or not, Zoe finds herself trapped in the most horrifying of situations…a Hallmark Christmas movie and the yule log is not far behind her.

If you were fortunate enough to experience the first ADULT SWIM YULE LOG also known as THE FIREPLACE, you know the uncapped craziness that occurs in a Casper Kelly film. At first, the film was just a burning log in a fireplace, but after a few minutes, the film unfolds into a nightmare cabin in the woods story with inbred hillbillies, fireplace devils, time warps, alien invasions, and of course, a killer yule log. The first film was so unpredictable and unhinged that I was amazed at what I was seeing and befuddled at the sheer creativity gone into what has become a holiday traditional watch for those without a fireplace. Well, this time Kelly takes on another holiday tradition—the Hallmark Holiday movie, and again things take that crazy train very quicky.

YULE LOG 2 does a fantastic job of splitting the time between telling your typical survivor’s tale continuing from the previous film and checking off every Hallmark movie cliché one can think of. While there are moments of sheer goofiness, YULE LOG 2 still tells a rather sweet story centering on Zoe getting over her trauma from the first film, conquering her fears, and moving on with her life. YULE LOG 2 simultaneously lampoons the Hallmark tropes and honors them in a way that most filmmakers would fail. Yes, all of the tropes are there; big city folks being stuck in a small town, the lead bumping into the perfect hunk by happenstance, the lost family recipe found, and of course, it all comes to a head at the annual holiday festival. Just this time, the whole thing is permeated with a flaming log on a killing spree.

It’s been tried before to set a horror film against the backdrop of a horror film (see DEAR SATAN from a few years ago), but never has it been done so well. Kelly cleverly switches tones back and forth between genres but represents it by widening the picture and darkening the color palate of the film whenever Zoe talks about her harrowing experiences. This scene is perfectly illustrated when Zoe goes on a date and half the room is colored in bright, warm hues, while the other is dark and foreboding. It’s this kind of little details that occur ever-so frequently in YULE LOG 2.

And gory? You betcha. The carnage the log leaves in its path is truly gruesome. The log goes through several permutations as the film goes on, culminating into a monstrous log monster by the end. It’s ridiculous, having a walking and talking log as a monster, but by the time the creature takes its final form, I was so enrapt with the creativity that I just rolled with it.

And you should too. Like it or not, there’s something about the holidays that makes one steer towards the lighter stuff. Even my gruesome ass prefers to watch horror with a holiday bend to it to some of the other stuff released right now. THE YULE LOG 2 is something special in that it combines two genres that one would think would have nothing in common, and somehow makes it all work. The acting is sharp. The comedy worked for me all the way through (I’m still giggling about a certain lost fudge recipe). The gore is aplenty. And the film ended with warmth and wholesomeness but also a foreboding sense of what is to come. You can’t beat it. So just check out this crazy little movie that’s bound to warm the chambers of your dark hearts.

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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)