Hoax For The Holidays

An often interminable piece of work, Hoax For The Holidays follows Martha MacIsaac’s Casey McCullen as she creates a firestorm of media activity after tossing a cup of coffee against the outside wall of a local donut shop – with the image, which apparently resembles Jesus, forcing the community’s myriad of residents to confront their individual problems. Filmmaker George Mihalka, working from Josh MacDonald’s script, has infused the early part of Hoax For The Holidays with a disastrously uneventful sensibility that immediately sets the viewer on edge, with the less-than-compelling atmosphere compounded by the film’s total lack of interesting, three-dimensional characters. (This is true even of MacIsaac’s affable protagonist, as Casey, for the most part, comes off as a generic small-town-girl-with-dreams-of-escaping-to-the-big-city type.) The movie’s inert sensibilities are compounded by an ongoing emphasis on subplots that couldn’t possibly be less interesting (eg Casey’s romance with a dimwitted local), and there’s little doubt that one’s continuing efforts at finding something (anything) here to wholeheartedly embrace are thwarted at every turn. By the time the eye-rollingly preachy finale rolls around, Hoax For The Holidays has certainly cemented its place as an interminable and uncommonly wrongheaded bit of independent filmmaking – with the pervasively unwatchable vibe leading the viewer to wonder which demographic, if any, the film has been geared toward.

1/2* out of ****