Secret Santa

A great choice for watching with horror-loving friends during the party season, this slightly wobbly but nevertheless fun film is accompanied on DVD by a gem of a special feature, a making-of documentary which, though overlong, is also highly enjoyable. You don't look at the film in quite the same way afterwards.

Shot as a series of one on one interviews with occasional snippets of footage from prep or from the film itself, this, in its roundabout way, sums up the story of production. On Halloween 2015, director Adam Marcus and his friends got very drunk and had an idea for a film. The next day he went round to his neighbour's house and asked him to star in it. After three more weeks of talking and drinking, there was a script, and then it was a case of shipping cast and crew up the side of a mountain in the worst snowstorm for years to try and build a set in the dark (during a lengthy power cut) in sufficient time to do some actual filming. Despite these conditions, everybody seems to have had a good time and they have many further adventures to recount here.

Low budget filmmakers will find this educational. The challenge of pulling off what might otherwise be simple stunts and effects on a shoestring is quite something, and puts the film's successes in perspective. There are also some great personal anecdotes here.