When Silent Night, Deadly Night was released in 1984, Leonard Maltin infamously wrote a scathing review of the Christmas slasher, pondering if the next step on the horror genre’s path to perverting all things wonderful and joyous was a horror movie about a demented Easter bunny. Almost 40 years later, we’re still without a truly great Easter horror movie.
Mind you, a handful of independent horror movies over the years have attempted to fill that void, including Peter Rottentail, Easter Bunny Bloodbath, Beaster Day and Easter Bunny Massacre, but the holiday is still without its own Halloween or Black Christmas, so to speak. The best attempt we’ve seen to date? That’d be a 10-minute short film, actually.
“It’s a special day tomorrow. Someone’s coming tonight. He’s furry. And he hops…“
Back in 2016, the horror anthology Holidays was released, made up of eight different holiday-themed segments. The fun thing about the anthology is that the segments are shown in the order in which those holidays take place; it begins with a Valentine’s Day segment and ends with one set on New Year’s Eve, hitting every major holiday (aside from Thanksgiving) in-between. They range from truly bizarre (“St. Patrick’s Day) to absolutely bone-chilling (“Father’s Day”), but “Easter” is easily the most memorable.
Directed by Nicholas McCarthy (At the Devil’s Door), the “Easter” segment is a truly unsettling examination of the titular holiday, centered on a young girl who can’t wrap her head around the idea that the day marks both the rebirth of Jesus Christ and the arrival of a giant bunny. McCarthy blends the two Easter tales together for a standout short film that is surprisingly (given its brief run-time) rich with mythology, and it’s also home to the most nightmarish depiction of a beloved holiday icon that you’ll likely ever see.
An overused term, but it’s truly Pure. Nightmare. Fuel.
As a kid, there was always something just a little bit creepy about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, even if the magic and excitement usually drowned out the fear. The idea of some sort of otherworldly rabbit breaking into your house at night while everyone’s asleep is inherently creepy no matter how you slice it, and being told that we were never to wake up and actually see what it looks like only added to that creepiness. But what if you actually did wake up? What if you did see the Easter Bunny? And what if he wasn’t what your parents told you he was? That’s the core idea behind McCarthy’s Easter, which plays out a bit like a demented and nightmarish Easter version of The Santa Clause.
Fun Fact: the short’s “Bunny Man,” looking more like a Cenobite than the Easter Bunny, was played by Mark Steger, who went on to play the Demogorgon in “Stranger Things”!
You can rent Holidays over on Amazon this Easter Sunday!
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