***SPOILER WARNING: The reviews and discussion below may ruin the entire movie for you. Proceed only if you’re okay with knowing the entire plot.

JD’s review: 3.5/5

Casper Kelly has been a writer and director on assorted shows for Williams Street Studios, the production house responsible for [adult swim] on Cartoon Network, including “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell”, which he created. But he is perhaps best known for the absolutely bonkers short film, “Too Many Cooks,” which premiered completely unannounced at four in the morning back in October 2014 and quickly went viral on the internet for being, well, absolutely bonkers. It’s an 11-minute psychotic acid trip descent from comic absurdity to utter mindfuck madness.

Now Kelly is back to his old tricks with his feature directorial debut, “Adult Swim Yule Log”. Yes, that’s the actual title of the film (well, kinda). And much like “Too Many Cooks”, it premiered completely unannounced in the middle of the night just a few days ago. And that’s where the title comes in. You see, the first minute or so of the movie is a typical TV yule log program for the holiday season – a nice closeup shot of a crackling fireplace with some holly jolly music playing, nothing more. But if you stick around long enough, you’ll hear a voice. You’ll (kinda) see the owner of this fireplace’s house show up to clean before the next Air B&B tenant arrives. And then you will (sort of) bear witness to a home invasion resulting in the rape and murder of that Air B&B owner, the camera never leaving its yule log frame. You’ll see thankfully little and hear way too much. And now we’re off to the horror races.

The killers clean up and hide, the new tenants arrive, and then a second group of new tenants arrives thanks to a double booking. The camera does eventually move from the close-up of the fireplace. What ensues from here is something I can only describe as FOUR HORROR MOVIES HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME. There is, as we already know, the home invasion slasher movie that has already begun, but we don’t come back to it for about half the film. There is also a sort of supernatural haunted house thing happening, with some heavy racial overtones involved. There’s a weird hallucinatory hell dimension thing as well, complete with Vaguely Satanic Colonel Sanders tricking people into killing themselves before they are ever born. And then there’s also a horror comedy about a possessed log from the fireplace flying around and brutally smashing peoples’ heads into soup.

The film’s ambition to layer and weave in a kaleidoscopic array of horror tropes is admirable, and each mode of the film is compelling in its own sense. The home invasion slasher manages to be one of the more genuinely unsettling things I’ve seen in a while, quite depraved, especially in some of the dialogue; I don’t think I’ll ever wipe “did you get your yuckies out” from my mind. Eesh. The haunted racist house presents some beginning threads of generational evil that could potentially lead to something. The weird man in the fireplace is much the same, the beginning of something we hope to be more. And then there’s that goddamned log, which is so utterly absurd as to elicit belly laughs while generating some of the most brutal cranial gore I’ve seen in quite some time.

The problem here, though, is that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I would love to see each of these plotlines explored in its own film. As it stands, what we get here is almost more of a simultaneous play anthology, and there isn’t enough in any of the four major elements to be completely satisfying on its own. Also, the tone of the separate storylines varies so much that it’s impossible for me to stay engaged with any of them. The slasher shit is white knuckle twisted, and the log is hilarious, but they mix like oil and water and do each other a disservice. The racist house and fireplace man bits happen almost as tangential asides that don’t seem to have anything to do with the movie as a whole until they do. Ultimately, to make a terribly teenage metaphor, it’s like I was being masturbated by four people at once and they all quit before the good part.

Overall, I give this one 3.5 Skulls out of 5. The ambition is applaudable, as is the weirdness, and there’s a lot to like here. I just didn’t get as much as I wanted of any of it.

JD’s prediction for Michelle’s rating: 4.25/5 or 2/5

I’m really not sure what to expect. A part of me thinks she could love this for pretty much the exact reasons I didn’t. It thinks she could be very taken by the sheer madness of it. It feels she’ll also recognize the almost anthological nature of what’s going on here, and she loves anthologies. It expects she’ll especially love that fricken log. That part of me expects her to land on 4.25 Skulls. But the other part thinks there’s a really good chance she hated every minute of this and comes in on a 2. Let’s all find out together!

Michelle’s Review: 4/5

“The Fireplace” is done in a style that can only be compared to creator Casper Kelly’s other work, like “Too Many Cooks,” an episode from a fake sitcom which gave me a severe panic attack when I watched it. It feels more like a joke than a real attempt to make something meaningful. I mean, it’s a movie hidden in yule log footage. The target demographic is comprised of people who would 1) watch yule log footage, and 2) choose yule log footage aired by Adult Swim. When the “Rick and Morty” season finale was done and the channel transitioned into footage usually reserved for background noise at a holiday gathering, those who decided “Eh, this is fine” were a special group of people who I can’t understand or relate to. I’m sure there were also people who tuned in specifically to watch the Adult Swim yule log, and that is a level of sociopath I don’t even want to think about.

And yet, somehow, I really liked it.

It takes a full minute for there to be any hint that this yule log is not as it appears. The rumbling of a car could be mistaken for a sound heard from outside or an error in the audio. It’s not until two minutes in that a character is introduced and the trick is revealed. With only glimpses of things passing in front of the camera, we rely on audio to know what is going on.

The opening five minutes of “The Fireplace” is horror mastery. Yule logs are an icon of comfort and warmth, often present during family gatherings where love is bountiful. Listening to a woman being murdered over the sounds of a pleasant cackling fire is already unsettling, but the victim’s clothes being burned using a symbol of togetherness feels like a violation. I welcomed the discomfort and felt a little ashamed admitting that I wanted to see the violence.

When the camera pulled back to reveal the rest of the room, I was disappointed that audio would not be the main storytelling element, but there were still beautiful tricks done that kept me invested. The way the camera switched focus to show the man peeking behind the open doorway as the couple discussed their future effectively kept a reminder of the danger only a few feet away.

A third of the way in, “The Fireplace” abandons the single stationary camera viewpoint and transitions to a more typical multi-camera scene. Again I felt dismayed, but I knew I would just need to accept that whatever this creation was, it was following its own rules. There was no point getting comfortable anymore and these early shifts in scene and tone felt like a way to limber up and prepare for the ride we were about to go on. By the time Henry meets the little man in the fireplace then stabs his own mother to create a paradox and disappear, I was like, “Yeah. That seems about right.”

The police hint early on that this film will include slashers, ghosts, demons, and aliens. A lot of tropes were crammed into a movie which was, again, hidden in yule log footage, a fact I cannot get over. If horror doesn’t scare you, the lead character will with her thoughts on the state of the world and the imminent end of humanity we’re hurling towards. To cap it all off, there’s the whole thing with pimento cheese that I just couldn’t watch.

“The Fireplace” is full of very good comedy and horror. Even the parts that are a little lacking are done so well that I can’t hate them. There’s beautiful camera work, clever storytelling, great actors, and a giant flaming log that flies around and kills people while wailing like a baby. What’s not to love?

This is not a perfect movie, but it’s definitely the best one I’ve seen hidden inside yule log footage. 4/5

Michelle’s prediction for JD’s rating: 3/5

He’s impressed by what was accomplished but overall unhappy with the end result. 3/5

Discussion

JD: I don’t think we even need rebuttals, haha

Michelle: Me neither. I just read yours and realized we hit on a lot of the same points in different ways. I did make the anthology connection but didn’t put it in mine.

J: Aso I COMPLETEY FORGOT THE GODDAMNED ALIEN

J: Kinda wild how accurate our predictions were tho haha

M: I know! I’m so proud of us!

J: Actually, as I’ sitting here, I’m realizing this is the exact stuff we should put in our rebuttals, haha

J: So yeah, I guess it’s more like FIVE horror movies happening simultaneously, haha

J: I agree with you that the first six minuts of this are INCREDIBLE. Probably my favorite part of the whole thing. It was SO effectivelu uncomfortable.

J: Effectively. Yup, I make typos, dear reader.

M: “Vaguely Satanic Colonel Sanders” is a perfect name. He’s called “Little Man in Fire” on IMDB which also sounds sinister somehow.

J: I was pretty proud of that one. My favorite part of that whole element was the Deer Headed Bartender

M: I like the people scream laughing while on fire.

M: The end part where the dialogue starts repeating gave me “Too Many Cooks” vibes and I was reeeeeally worried this would give me another panic attack.

J: The imento cheese thing was real tough, too. The hillbilly mother/son home invasion bit was, of course, my favorite. But it was SHOCKINGLY aggressive. Like, that was some of the most disturbing stuff I have seen in a while that I was still able to appreciate.

J: PIMENTO CHEESE I hate this keyboard.

J: Yeah, that little meta-scene where they go outside into the production of the show was the only part that didn’t work for me at all.

M: I think it was the lack of seeing that heightened that first bit so much.

J: Definitely. That opening scene is a masterpiece.

J: I almost threw up in my mouth when I first heard the mother say, “did you get yer yuckies out?”

J: There’s just something about that phrase that was SO disturbing. I think that actress’s voice performance had a lot to do with it.

M: Gotta get the yuckies out to make space for the cheese.

J: All the individual bits were so good. I just had the same problem I have with most anthologies: it’s either not enough to hook me or not enough to satisfy me.

M: I thought the lack of cohesive plot would bother you. My memory told me there was barely a plot, and I had this whole thing typed up about how it’s not even a movie. But when I was skipping through to refresh my memory, I made the anthology connection and realized what the actual structure was.

J: Oh, interesting side note – I watched it on the Adult Swim ap, not on HBO Max, so it was censored. All the fucks were silenced and the boobs were blurred. It kinda added something in a weird way.

J: Yeah, it’s definitely a movie. There’s a story there I was able to follow. It was just TOO MUCH CHAOS (very metal)

J: Yeah, give them blog readin’ people a taste of this jibbajabba.

J: Let them mock my keyboarding skills.

J: I SAID I COULD SPELL NOT TYPE

M: I remembered it as being one short story after another, kind of, because of how much it shifted for the first half hour.

J: I loved when that guys asks if the main lady had heard of their podcast, and she ignores him, and he immediately asks again as if she just didn’t hear him.

J: “There’s a Podcast in the House!” is a pretty great horror podcast name, though.

M: When they were mocking podcasts, it hurt my heart.

J: Yeah, I was definitely, like… “oh my god, is that us?”

M: I blurted out that I had a horror movie podcast to a movie theatre employee six months ago, and I’m still physically uncomfortable thinking about it.

J: 🤣

M: She made the mistake of having a horror movie listed as her favorite film on her nametag.

J: I mean, at least you didn’t go nearly mute in the presence of Joe Bob and Darcy, haha

J: Oooo, what movie was it?

M: Noroi: The Curse

M: Kidding. I don’t remember.