CHRISTMAS 2022: The Leech (2022)

Let us consider the career of Jeremy Gardner. As a director, Gardner made low budget zombie fave “The Battery” and quirky creature feature “After Midnight.” As an actor, he's appeared in films from indie horror auteurs like Benson and Moorehead, Mickey Keating, and the aforementioned Joe Begos. (In fact, he even popped up in “Christmas Bloody Christmas.”) He also appeared in “Sadistic Intentions,” a film from director Eric Pennycoff. I haven't seen that one or even heard of it before. Yet I felt compelled to check out “The Leech,” Pennycoff's follow-up, anyway. Perhaps that's because I like Garnder or maybe it's just because it's a Christmas-set horror movie that's not about Santa or the Krampus or anything like that. It's nice to have some variety in the holiday horror genre.

Catholic priest David leads a congregation of exactly one, with his assistant Rigo seemingly being the only person who attends his church at all. On the way home from another practically empty sermon, David meets Terry. Following an argument with his girlfriend, the foul-mouthed Terry is facing homelessness. David decides to take the man in, despite his obnoxious habits and vulgar opinions. It's almost Christmas after all. Soon afterwards, Terry reconciles with Lexi, his girlfriend. She moves into David's house too. As the holiday draws closer, David finds his capacity for forgiveness and charity tested by his increasingly depraved house guests. They'll continue to challenge the priest's resolve, pushing him further to the edge of sanity.

“The Leech” has a clever set-up for a dark comedy that quickly pushes towards horror. David endeavors to live his life like Christ. He wants to help the helpless and is happy to invite Terry, someone who has fallen on hard luck, into his home. Yet this is a house guest that quickly pushes the limits of Christian charity. It’s an easy story to relate to, of wanting to help someone but also wanting to protect your own sanity. Most of us have experiences with guests that have overstayed their welcome and “The Leech” pushes that as far as possible. Terry refuses to respect boundaries, blaring heavy metal throughout the day and night, constantly swearing, and seemingly delighting in exposing the priestly David to drugs, alcohol, and sexual acts. Under these circumstances, we’d all crack eventually. 

This puts us in David’s corner. Clearly, Terry and Lexi are the villains in this scenario, right? Yet “The Leech” has a nice layer of ambiguity to it, by slowly revealing that David is not all he appears to be. There’s a suggestion that his current puritan lifestyle was born out of a past as a partying homosexual. (Which the film nicely doesn’t explore too much, leaving the audience to wonder.) When the topic of Lexi being pregnant comes up, David goes on a disingenuous anti-abortion rant. After the house guests push him too far, David begins to enforce his own morality on them in creepy ways. Yes, he seems to have some hang-ups about his dead mother too. “The Leech” shows all of its central trio slipping into depravity and instability, making this more complex than just a story about uninvited guests driving you nuts. 

David does get driven nuts though. He slips more and more into madness as “The Leech” goes on, the film getting more hallucinatory as the violence and embittered speeches get more intense. Pennycoff’s direction is strong during these moments. He makes good use of Christmas lights for mood coloring and has a good handle on dream logic. (Even if the cinematography is a bit too dark in general.) Yet “The Leech” does loose its footing some the more out there it gets. Luckily, the performances remain compelling. Graham Skipper has a pleasant avuncular quality as David. Watching his kind exterior slowly melt away towards bitterness and madness is rewarding. Jeremy Gardner goes amusingly over-the-top as Terry, clearly relishing a chance to play a character who disregards all tact and good taste. 

"The Leech" does have its fair share of Christmas atmosphere too, even if it's only tangentially about the holiday. The story of someone striving to be Christ-like during the holiest of seasons, and eventually failing spectacularly, touches on the meaning of the day more than most December films do. Coming in at a compact 87 minutes, "The Leech" doesn't overstay its welcome the way its characters do. It's an amusingly nasty dark comedy that satisfied my desire for a twisted spin on the Christmas holiday. [7/10]