Adult Swim’s first feature-length horror film is the holiday gift that keeps on giving and a standout genre experiment.

“It’s so hard to surprise people these days…Everybody’s seen everything.”

It’s two minutes before Adult Swim’s holiday yule log presentation finally shows its hand, breaks free of its defining formula, and begins to first hint that something bigger and more sinister than a seasonal celebration is afoot. A yule log video is a holiday tradition that’s supposed to provide its audience comfort through warm, continuous, predictable images. The Fireplace, alternatively, is the complete antithesis of this tradition as it unsettles and surprises the viewer through every single minute–yet, inexplicably, also still succeeds as a functional yule log video. This stealth feature film functions as a cornucopia of horror genre tropes that plays out like an ultra-stylized Dadaist Cabin in the Woods filtered through Adult Swim sensibilities.

The Fireplace, aka Adult Swim Yule Log, begins in a familiar place where an unassuming cabin comes with a haunting backstory. A couple (Andrea Laing and Justin Miles) who hope to have a romantic weekend book an innocent Airbnb, unaware of the horrors that have taken place there and the monsters who have claimed it as their “territory.” This basic plot gives structure to The Fire Place, but this is a living art piece that continues to evolve and surprise over time.

The Fireplace is a fantastic experimental piece of cinema that, against all odds and better judgment, succeeds as a full-length horror film that’s akin to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s surprisingly evocative and deep for a project of this nature, but The Fireplace’s first act also brilliantly adheres to its extremely limited structure without ever cheating out of this stationary single-shot structure. It’s genuinely exciting to see Casper Kelly up his game with structural subversions like he’s previously done with Adult Swim’s Too Many Cooks and Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough, except this time on a feature-length scale. There’s no one more deserving of this type of experimental horror cinema.

On that note, a project of this nature couldn’t work as well in a movie theater. Yule log footage doesn’t air in movie theaters, but Kelly brilliantly caters this project towards television so that when audiences discover that this isn’t just a yule log presentation there’s an even greater impact that’s made. The Fireplace functions as a genuine horror film that doesn’t need to be “discovered” in order to stand out, but the joy of stumbling upon this experiment does add a tremendous amount to the experience. None of this is gratuitous either. Much like the characters in The Fireplace, the audience is just as much a curious, unsuspecting spectator to what eventually plays out. 

On top of the initial structural tricks, The Fireplace has some genuinely excellent instances of cinematography. The Fireplace’s “limited” camerawork never makes the movie feel restricted. There’s a simple moment where a rack focus from the background to the foreground results in an exceptional jump scare reveal that’s one of the smartest, scariest uses of “unintentional” camerawork that I’ve seen in a horror film. The Fireplace is smart, funny, and scary, but its subtly clever uses of cinematography are also a consistent highlight.

There are certain stylistic moments that attempt to momentarily flash to the past occupants of this cabin that are used as temporary transitions to initially help with the “single-take” nature of the film. They’re not exactly a misfire, but they also don’t feel successful or that they add much to the experience. As The Fireplace continues, it increasingly embraces this device as the film tells multiple stories between timelines, in the same cabin, rather than merely turning to them for stylistic coverage. The Fireplace feels more whole once it goes all in on these ideas and begins to spin these multiple plates at the same time rather than pretending that they don’t exist.

Beyond the film’s inspired stylistic trappings, there is some really smart, justified dialogue that conveys a ton on characters and circumstances without bogging the film down in clunky exposition. It’s able to make this single-location setup feel natural with what happens to play out in front of the camera. The Fireplace very naturally sows the seeds for vengeful spirit curses, aliens, and backwoods murderers. The perfect paranormal cocktail is put together so that anything and everything is possible during this fateful night. 

The Fireplace has the most fun when it’s subverting horror tropes. However, there’s also a serious relationship drama that plays out at the center of this movie that’s not quite Marriage Story, but still feels real, believable, and provides an emotional core to this experimental horror film. Along with this comes some astute commentary on colonialism, white privilege, and entrenched racism through the area and specific circumstances that happen to trigger the supernatural events that surround the film’s cabin.

The Fireplace hangs onto the yule log artifice for as long as possible, but the movie takes a serious stylistic and narrative turn a little after the thirty-minute mark. Some may not think that this shift is as strong as what precedes it and at this point The Fireplace certainly feels a little more normal. However, the bigger, Lynchian places that the movie goes to afterwards are arguably worth the bigger risks that the film takes. The Fireplace even dabbles with radical time travel “What If?” scenarios that are weird, wonderful, but most of all, different. The film’s final act takes a dumb, but fun, turn that’s surprisingly frightening and reminiscent of Quentin Dupieux’s killer tire movie, Rubber. Furthermore, The Fireplace contains some genuinely terrifying moments and extremely graphic displays of violence. The movie delivers haunting visuals that will definitely stick with the audience long after The Fireplace has been extinguished.

In The Fireplace, Casper Kelly creates the surreal mashup of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Barbarian, and It’s a Wonderful Life that you never knew you so desperately needed. In a project with so few expectations, it’s impressive just how much The Fireplace accomplishes. This is a deliriously fun and unpredictable horror film, which is such a rare feat to pull off these days. The movie gets a little long in the tooth towards the end, but there are far more hits than misses in this ambitious piece of horror. It’s guaranteed to please audiences, whether it’s casually viewed in the background like an actual yule log video or captively watched on the edge of one’s seat.

The Fireplace is so effective and disturbing that it’s likely to cause PTSD the next time that anyone watches an actual yule log stream in the future.

‘Adult Swim Yule Log’ (The Fireplace) is now available to stream on HBO Max.