I wanted to like Bloody New Year. I really did. Especially in the face of an almost unanimous wave of virulent, bone-deep loathing directed at the film in every single review I read about it. And as I watched it, I thought to myself, “This can’t be as bad as every one has made it out to be. There’s got to be something redeemable here – even if it’s something really stupid, like an on-camera mistake or terrible acting.” But you know, there wasn’t. And when the end credits rolled to a finish, I was left with a feeling of – well, it’s difficult to describe. Let me see if I can explain it to you.

Bloody New Year opens at an English “fun fair” (their term for a carnival), where two faceless British couples and their interminable loser of a pal Spud land in a mess of trouble with some carnies hassling an American girl. After rescuing the Yank chick and destroying a spook house in the process, the newly minted sextet decides to take a boat ride. Spud being Spud, he manages to run the boat aground, and the group finds themselves stranded on a seemingly deserted island. After lots of wandering around, they find a hotel, completely empty but decked out for a Christmas party. Attempting to find the owners, the gang instead discovers lots of what are supposed to be “ghostly” goings-on -- a band that disappears in the ballroom, a friendly maid that only the American girl can see, and a toy Santa that turns itself on (this earns a lot of screen time), among other underwhelming supernatural phenomena. Eventually, through very convoluted reasoning (there’s something to do with an experimental plane launch), it’s determined that the hotel is somehow stuck in the year 1959, and the undead staff and guests feel less than welcome towards the visitors. But instead of a showdown between the ghosts and the kids, we get what can only be called a string of cinematic non-sequiters—one of the kids is attacked by an animated table cloth, while another turns into a silver-faced zombie, and the American girl gets stuck in a room that fills up with snow. Yep, lots of snow.

Although I’m painting this as inept, the real problem for me with Bloody New Year is that it’s not just an atrociously made horror film. There’ s potential peeking around every concern—the pacing is fine, the performance (except for Spud) are professional, and there are a couple of okay scares (most notably a guy who pops out of a movie screen to kick Spud’s ass). But for every redeemable moment, there’s at least ten flat, pointless scenes, or ones that are undone by a lack of imagination and/or budget, and which completely deflate any attempt to put this movie on an even keel. I’m thinking specifically of the bit where the blander of the two bland couples is threatened by something lurking in the forest. And while director Norman J. Warren succeeds in setting up the scene to deliver, his payoff is a couple of shots of trees shaking vigorously and a frantic POV shot of the camera lurching towards the kids. Ooh, scary.