It’s the worst time of year again. The last Halloween decorations are coming down, the Christmas music is playing, and you’ve got 2 post-midterms family gatherings to look forward to before the end of the year. Joyous. And with the end of daylight savings time comes a new slate of horror movies for those holidays. Axemas is one of those films. Kind of. Really, it’s the story of a film crew that knew someone with access to a storage facility where they could film and decided this opportunity was too good too good to pass up so they wrote a film around it, but that sounds incredibly boring with no appeal to anyone, so they put the killer in a Santa outfit and gave him a few Christmas one-liners to try to sell this as a Christmas movie.
The short follows David ( Dillon Weishuhn ) a pretty cool dude that knows how to entertain and who has exclusive access to the ultimate venue available for the upcoming Christmas party he’s planning with his girlfriend Sarah ( Ashley Campbell ) and two other couples who I assume also have names. David is an office worker at a storage facility, you see, and he has plans to sneak everyone in, to party in an empty storage unit where they can party until 5 AM. Who needs electricity or working toilet when you can squat in the corner of a barren aluminum box after having some beers with friends? This all seems to be a flimsy pretense to satisfy their very specific long-term storage-related kinks as the couples quickly split from each other to go fuck in a unit of their very own because there’s no aphrodisiac quite like the smell of dusty furniture and decaying Pokemon cards. The best part is, David explains they don’t have to worry about being caught because there are inexplicably no cameras on the inside of the storage facility even though we see signs that say that state otherwise and they immediately follow this by going outside to go from building to building and up the cargo elevator.
This magical night of after-hours storage frivolity wasn’t meant to be, however, as a guy in a Santa outfit starts murdering the partygoers with an axe, each time followed by a groaner of a one-liner. I’m an Evil Dead fan, so one-liners are just fine by me and they may be one of the few aspects of this film that aren’t entirely misguided, but they’re delivered with such dour apathy that you get the impression that no one was having fun during this production and you won’t either after numerous chase scenes through identical hallways culminating in a complete anticlimax. There is more that can be said about the acting, which borders on Birdemic quality on occasion but never manages to be quite that memorable and the questionable lighting and camera choices that make it seem like interactions between two characters are occurring in completely different locations, but I think I’ve hit upon the main reasons you shouldn’t watch Axemas.
A storage facility isn’t the worst setting for a horror movie and they could have done something with the characters rummaging through one of the units for weapons to use against the killer, but that wasn’t in the budget. Given how sterile and empty everything feels, it seems they would have been better off just setting it inside of a house, which would at least have some semblance of visible distinction. Do not buy Axemas, do not rent it to riff with your friends. Christmas is canceled and Tiny Tim is in his grave, struck dead with boredom. Bah humbug.
If you want to take after your racist uncle and ruin Christmas again, Axemas is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime and Vimeo On Demand
