When you put on a horror movie, you know what to expect. The movie’s scares may vary, but you know how it’s going to end, one way or another. Some of the few exceptions are the films of Casper Kelly, perhaps best known as the mastermind behind Too Many Cooks, the ode to 1980s TV openings that devolves into a slasher film.
Kelly made his mark on the holiday season last year with Adult Swim Yule Log, a movie that began as just standard footage of a roaring hearth accompanied by Christmas carols, but slowly turned into a classic horror movie where both the murderer and the murder weapon is a sentient burning log.
Now, Kelly is back with a sequel, and while you may think you know what to expect from it, Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out goes in a completely different — and surprisingly wholesome — direction.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out.
Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out revisits Zoe (Andrea Laing), the “final girl” from the first movie, as she recovers from her first brush with the deadly log. She just wants to get far away from her troubles. Meanwhile, the log escapes its internment in a police evidence locker and seeks its own revenge.
But why make a sequel to a movie that was so dependent on the shock of its own existence? Could a sequel live up the rug pull of the original’s horror movie twist?
“Definitely one way to have done a sequel would've been just having the log in a new fireplace and then new people come in,” Casper Kelly tells Inverse. “But I wanted to try something different than doing that.”
He found the perfect solution in an unlikely place. “I was in this film club where we watched a Hallmark movie. I had a friend who loves Hallmark movies and I said, well, what's a weird one? And she recommended this one, Holiday in Handcuffs, so we watched that. I'm like, this is bananas. But also, we were laughing, but I got emotionally involved. I got into it and I felt good,” Kelly says.
Therein lies the thesis of Yule Log 2: Hallmark movies are cheesy, but they make you feel good. It’s said by a nurse at the start of Zoe’s recovery but is dismissed by her since she’s obviously traumatized. But then she finds herself in her own Hallmark movie when she gets stranded in the quaint town of Mistletoe, a town so imbued with Christmas spirit it has its own color grading. “It just felt like if you're a character who just went through what Zoe went through, I wouldn't go back to my normal life,” Kelly says. “I would want to get the hell out of wherever I lived and try to escape that whole world.”
Zoe literally keeps running into meet-cutes in Mistletoe (the town is full of clumsy hunks) but she inevitably meets Bert (Michael Shenefelt), a kindly widower and owner of a small ornament business. What follows is a surprisingly poignant meditation on grief, trauma, and the question of escaping your past.
But it’s still a Casper Kelly movie, so things get weird. The log returns, this time infecting someone to become a monstrous human-log hybrid, something that is shown in graphic detail through physical effects. The now-humanoid log goes on a murder spree, and it’s horrific in a way that’s only heightened by the folksiness of all the characters.
But once the blood has been mopped up, Zoe and Bert have a happily-ever-after reunion, punctuated with a few Too Many Cooks Easter eggs and magical shrimp fudge. Against all odds, this movie operates as a genuine — if gory — cheesy romance, leaving you with that feel-good feeling Zoe initially rebuffed.
“I could have put in more jokes if I had wanted to,” Kelly says. “I could have parodied it harder if I wanted to, but I did want it to not be a pure parody. I just looked for the opportunities to turn it up a couple of notches without breaking it into a pure comedy.”
That’s what makes Yule Log more than just a gimmicky horror movie: it’s a deconstruction of form and genre that keeps two diametrically opposed tones operating at 100%. Now, only one question remains: what comes next? A Christmas movie spectacular? A stop-motion movie à la Rankin-Bass? Even though he’s the master of plate-spinning genres, Kelly’s a little preoccupied with other projects, like writing a Netflix movie, working on a movie with Barbarian’s BoulderLight Pictures, and even plotting a Skinamarink-style low-budget horror movie. But the temptation of a trilogy is looming.
“I was just interested in playing in that sandbox some more and maybe interested in the idea of doing a trilogy,” he says. “What would that entail? And can I stick the landing?”
