HOLIDAYS [2016]

A gaggle of genre directors (including Kevin Smith & Nicholas McCarthy) band together to create Holidays, a pretty tedious horror anthology that is more huge miss than minor hit.
Nobody seems to have brought their A-game to this mess of a film and it hurts the enjoyment of it quite a bit.  There's a few moments of interest, mostly Nicholas McCarthy's hilariously offensive Easter segment but you're better off avoiding this uninspired amateurish shit-fest at nearly all costs.

1 Jesus Bunny out of 5

AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR [2014]

I was fond of director Nicholas McCarthy's feature length debut, The Pact, so I was eager to see if he could creep me out just as much with At The Devil's Door.
Sadly he falls flat on this face with this unfocused sloppy mess.
The acting goes from great to embarrassing with it's three leads but perhaps it's the laughable dialogue they had trouble executing with confidence.  I appreciate the weighty story that McCarthy was attempting to tell but it all just falls apart with it's jarring shifts in pacing and doesn't quite have the strength to keep itself together once things get too "complicated".  It had a lot of potential with some great jump scares and tense atmospher but it never quite feels convinced it can pull it's own weight.

2 shirts on the mirror out of 5

THE PACT [2012]

Nicholas McCarthy's ghost story The Pact starts out overly rushed and littered with some questionable performances.  I was ready to write it off.

Then suddenly at the 30 minute mark it took a turn into the scary and fully absorbed me into this strange sunny California world.  It staged several frightening scenes in the stark daylight which normally is difficult to make effective but they pull it off with flying colors leading me to scream like a little girl in one moment.  It never really falls into the clichéd scares, silly twists or tries to be too smart for it's own good.  A simple scary little film that manages to rise above it's multiple plot holes.  

2½ holes in the wall out of 5