ELVES (a.k.a. Evil Elves) ** U.S.A. 2018 Dir: Jamaal Burden. 77 mins
A group of friends head to an unused warehouse to have a bit of a get together. While there, one of the group introduces a game involving an elf doll and the naughty list. As each person writes their name on the naughty list they soon discover that they are now cursed. The elves possesses each member of the group and gets them to kill in the order on which their names are on the list. As they realise that the game is very real they must now find the mysterious chest to send the elves back to whence they came.
ELVES is the sequel to the Justin Price directed 2017 film THE ELF but you don’t need to see that one to have this sequel make sense. If you have seen the previous film you would know that the elf dolls are a big part of that film, this time around though the elves take a back seat as the film is more about possession. Taking clear influence from the FINAL DESTINATION films in the order of people are killed, this sequel has dared to go a different direction then its predecessor so it should be praised for that. Unfortunately the film is let down by bad dialogue, scenes of people explaining the true meaning of Christmas and religion in amongst the horror. Not to mention the dreadful camerawork in some scenes and that terrible looking ear to ear grin done in visual effects for when people get possessed by the elves. The majority of the film sees the characters wandering from scene to scene only to be killed off in various ways, but its nothing a longtime horror fan wouldn’t have seen before. Overall this is a short low budget Christmas horror film that does well mixing a few horror sub-genres together, just don’t expect to be filled with Christmas joy after watching it.
Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins