Sunday, December 22, 2024

Yule Log (2023)

Three friends head to a cabin for the weekend in hopes of cheering up one whose wife has recently died. They go into the woods to get firewood and find a fallen rotten tree. None of them are particularly skilled with an ax so the rotten tree is easy game.  

Every chop of the ax reverberates in the body of a young woman who is wandering in the woods after a car crash and she collapses.   It turns out the tree is in a location where a witch was burned years ago. Their actions awaken the witch and branches start moving along the ground in a low budget Evil Dead fashion.

When the car crash woman shows up outside the cabin all discombobulated, they take her in.  One tries going for help but as the woods are alive with the sound of witchcraft and strange spirits in monk robs and plastic masks, it does not go well.  There’s also a three headed dragon skulking around.

This is an extremely low budget movie with a ton of padding to flesh out its length. It’s another Polonia movie so you know what you’re getting and the acting is cringeworthy.  There is a plug for Polonia’s Sister Krampus movie while the group is listening to the radio. The special effects are rudimentary at best.

The two scenes with food stand out because they are so odd.  The gas station appears to have nothing but second hand junk and three bags of different snacks randomly thrown on a shelf. It’s almost like the clerk put down his snacks for the night while doing something and these guys bought them.  Then there’s the scene where they search through the cupboards in the house looking for food and find one can of something. So did they not bring any food on their weekend trip?

Ridiculous dialogue

He insinuated [Night of the Mothers] was something sinister.

You heard her. The trees attacked her car and she ran for her life.

The car crash effects
The gas station with 3 random packs of snacks
and everything else is second hand junk
The not so scary in the day time spirits
The witch
I didn’t expect cgi fog or a monster
This is our hero?


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