Hanukkah



Decades ago, a disturbed man known as Judah Lazarus, thought he heard voices from God telling him to punish people. So he goes on a killing spree, killing one person each day during Hanukkah. His final intended “sacrifice” was to be his own son, Obediah, but the boy is saved thanks to police intervention, ending Judah’s killing spree for good.



…. Or so people think. Because over 30 years later the killings begin anew when another killer following Judah’s same MO begins killing people all over again in very similar fashion. Except this time police have no idea that the infamous Hanu-Killer has returned once again to his grisly task of punishing “bad Jews” by killing them, so the bodies are probably going to pile up quite a bit before anything gets done about it.



Holy crap, Hanukkah starts today and they made a Hanukkah horror movie? I didn’t know anyone made a Hanukkah horror movie! And it’s got Sid Haig and PJ Soles in it! That’s awesome! Why didn’t anyone tell me about this thing befor–…. Oh, because the writer/director isn’t Jewish… And he made the whole thing by just doing ‘research’ on Judaism…He barely had anyone check it for accuracy, you say?.…And thusly the movie ends up being both inaccurate and cringe most of the time? Ah, I see. That must be why. Well…bummer. But on the plus side I at least managed to find something new to watch in December that wasn’t a cheesy Christmas horror movie. It’s just too bad it ended up being…whatever this is.



Now, to the film’s credit, I enjoyed, like, half of it. But that really brings us to the film’s main issue, that being that it almost feels like two separate films that have been spliced together. But you know it’s not, because it contains the same actors in both segments. The one half contains the stalker-y, killing parts. Those are great. They are dark, brutal, and often disturbing on a variety of levels. These are the parts of the film that are played completely straight. In the very opening scene, you watch this guy carry a severed head down the stairs, disrobe, slowly climb up the stairs (naked), pass a screaming (also naked) woman who is chained to a dirty bathtub, retrieve his son (he is not naked), bring him downstairs, and then watch him come dangerously close to stabbing the boy. It’s all dark, and dirty, and a little perverse, and it genuinely feels like something you might see at the beginning of an Eli Roth or Rob Zombie film, just without the copious amounts of blood splatter. Not that there isn’t any blood splatter. You do get to see a woman get her skin flayed off, after all. It’s just that the movie doesn’t stay at that same level of serious depravity for all of the killing parts.



And it’s that seriousness that makes the other half of the movie feel all the more bizarre. Because the non killer focused scenes are not framed the same way, AT ALL. Any time the movie switches over to the group of young adult victims that we’re forced to follow, so basically just about every time we’re not focusing on the killer, the film starts acting like it’s some sort of cheesy horror comedy. And just like most of those cheesy horror comedies it suddenly becomes painfully unfunny. Almost all of the characters are unlikable or downright obnoxious, and most of the “comedy” boils down to self-deprecating comments about Jews, or lame sex jokes. Granted, there are a couple moments when the movie got a genuine chuckle out of me (those Russian jackasses could be amusing). But for the most part I suspect most people will cringe their way through these painfully long segments and wonder how the hell they can suck so bad while the gory slasher parts somehow managed to be so unsettling.



Which is unfortunate, because some of the writing is actually decent. Or at least it had the potential to be decent. At one point one of the characters laments, in one of the films’ few moments of self awareness, about there not being enough Jewish horror movies, and then proceeds to list off around half a dozen fun names for potential Jewish horror films. None of which they bothered to use for this movie! Why bother doing that and just settling on something simple like Hanukkah?! Gefilte Flesh sounded cool, why didn’t you go with that?! Bizarre.


I can’t believe you guys had You’ll Bleed A-Latkes in your back pocket and still went with the lamest title you could think of instead! You’ve gone completely meshuga.

The real problem with the “funny” segments though, is that most of the actors simply…can not pull off the material given to them, I’m sorry to say. Some of them try, and a couple of them are even okay at it, but for the most part you can tell these are not comedic actors. Cause while their acting is…okay, their timing and delivery sucks for the most part. Hell, some of them barely have an IMBD page to begin with, so you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up too much with the quality of acting in general. Haig and Soles are fine, of course. But everyone else is kinda hit or miss. And I don’t know what was going on with one of the gals, but it sounded like she was either suffering from a severe case of laryngitis, or she was a 7 pack-a-day smoker, because her voice was really struggling there in a couple scenes, and I found it more than a bit distracting. Then again, based on the excessive level of nudity in the film, I think the main consideration for hiring most of the ladies leaned more towards their willingness to disrobe and their shrieking ability, rather than their skills in any other department, so maybe the filmmakers didn’t care about anything as ‘silly’ as a few cracked lines.



But perhaps the real clincher in this ‘you really don’t need to watch this movie’ list is: Hanukkah doesn’t actually have an ending. Like, you are given a “climactic” confrontation scene and everything, but by the end the killer is still out and about, with seemingly only one person, not just looking for him, but also aware of his existence. And, presumably, the filmmakers did this because, during the end credits the movie states that “Obediah will return for ‘The Day Of Judgement”. So I guess they planned to make this a two (three?) parter? Only –  Surprise Surprise! – it seems as though the movie wasn’t nearly popular or successful enough to warrant any kind of sequel or follow-up. Meaning that the supposed The Day of Judgement sequel is, at least as of right now, nowhere to be seen. That, or the filmmakers didn’t realize that there’s already an American horror film titled The Day of Judgement from 1981, and now they have to use all their brainpower to come up with a new title. Either way though, I suspect that you probably shouldn’t expect to see any kind of sequel any time soon.


Oh…darn.

So….yeah, that’s the Hanukkah horror movie. Honestly, I thought it had potential. At least based on the opening scene. But then it decided that it also wanted to be “funny” and that kind of ruined it for me. And you wanna know the really odd thing? It’s not even listed as a comedy! Like, WTF? I’ve watched films that were clearly labeled as “horror comedies” and struggled to find the parts that were supposed to have humor in them, and yet this one is blatantly trying to be funny much of the time, and yet it doesn’t get noted on several major movie sites? I…am so confused by this. But then again I was confused by a lot of the logic used in this film (Wait, why is that guy dead, yet that other chick gets to live?), so I suppose that’s just par for the course with this movie. Oh well.



If you watch films like this for the dirt, and the blood, and copious amounts of female AND male nudity (everyone wave ‘hi’ to Sid in his final film role!), then you’ll at least find a few scenes here that will tickle your fancy. In fact, the opening scene works fairly well as a short if you’re interested in Sid and the best the film has to offer. But if you’re hoping for a more serious tone or any significant focus on Judaism, then I don’t think you’ll be too impressed. Though if you’re coming into this for the Judaism angle, then I heard that The Vigil is supposed to be good, so maybe try that instead.

Hanukkah is available on a variety of streaming services.

Hanukkah is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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