When an awkward date on Christmas Eve leads a couple into a strange theater, they’re treated to a bizarre and frightening collection of Christmas stories, featuring a wide ensemble of characters doing their best to avoid the horrors of the holidays. From boring office parties and last-minute shopping, to vengeful stalkers and immortal demons, there’s plenty out there to fear this holiday season.

All The Creatures Were Stirring, written and directed by husband and wife team  David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry , is a Christmas-themed horror anthology that uses familiar characters and holiday traditions turned on their heads to run the gamut from comedy to drama. The wraparound that ties all of these tales together follows two friends on a casual date who find themselves alone on Christmas Eve and decide to hit the theater for a unique Holiday-themed show. I was initially a little concerned as a wraparound about people watching an anthology movie isn’t that interesting, but this show manifests as a very low budget performance art piece that seems to be interpreted by our characters as the segments we watch, but following each segment, we’re transported back into this world and get to see the version of the story they’re seeing to great comedic effect as these scenes of gore and violence turn into actors in black turtlenecks thrusting props at each other and throwing out red tinsel “blood.”

Many anthologies lean heavily on comedy and there is a fair amount of that here, but the first segment shows that it’s not all fun and merriment, as an office gift exchange turns into a twisted game of Russian roulette, with each gift presenting the risk of death and information about the characters that cast suspicion on their character and who might be running the game. This was a strong start with some surprisingly good acting and character development that ultimately kind of fizzles out towards the end.

The second segment is one of the weaker ones and this pattern would continue, with every other segment seeming to be somewhat lacking. The good news is that even when All The Creatures Were Stirring falters, it never falls flat on its face and even the lowlights don’t come off as a chore to watch. This one is about a father trying to get back to a family dinner with some last minute gifts when he locks his keys and phone in his car. He walks up to a van to ask for a phone from the two women inside, which is initially given begrudgingly until they suddenly start to take an interest in helping him out. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this segment, the acting is fine and it’s got some nice makeup and costuming, it just feels like it’s been shoehorned into the theme and could’ve worked just as well in any anthology with minor tweaks.

Things really begin to take off towards the middle of the film with a mature rendition of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Chet ( Jonathan Kite ) is our modern Scrooge, who after a heated exchange with his Christmas-loving neighbor finds himself in the crosshairs of three vengeful spirits. Kite carries this segment as the embodiment of all the holiday humbugs out there, destroying and raising hell in his own personal war on Christmas. This is one of the funniest segments of the bunch as he makes half-hearted attempts to plead with the ghosts before switching to plan B and trying to scamper away.

We then have I Know What You Did Last Summer, but instead of a hook-wielding fisherman, it’s one of Santa’s reindeers. There’s also a plot about a photographer and one of his clients, but what you’re here for is the violent revenge of Blitzen. We get it, and it’s pretty fantastic when it comes, but there’s a lot of dead air leading up to it and even with the reindeer angle, it doesn’t feel like Christmas is an essential part of the story here.

All The Creatures Were Stirring decides to save the best for last, a bold move for an anthology when many seem to assume the viewer checked out halfway through. This one features a pre-Crazy Rich Asians  Constance Wu  stepping into a reality-warping Christmas tradition. This was a wild ride, with interesting editing and visual techniques and an unfolding narrative that keeps you on your toes. On top of that, you have some sharp comedy interspersed with moments of legitimate horror and sudden gore making for an experience that you can’t turn away from for fear of missing one of its many twists and turns.

All The Creatures Were Stirring manages to do the impossible by creating an anthology that is both entertaining and fairly consistent in quality without massive disparities in competence between segments, largely due to the fact that each segment has the same writer and director. There isn’t anything here that I would call essential viewing, but it carries you from start to finish without encountering any exhausting slogs and that is an accomplishment in its own right.