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burningexeter · 3 months

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Twas The Night Before And All Through

What is it —

A 2D animated Christmas horror film that's an aesthetic cross between Tony Moore's artwork as a comic book artist and 2000s/early 2010s action cartoons.

PREMISE:

Set two days before Christmas Eve in the middle of Los Angeles, California when everyone and everything is in chaos preparing for the big day with last minute touches, we follow a 25 year old single mother, Andrea Adlard, trying to raise her 8 year old daughter Sophia all on her own and give a most loving Christmas as always since it's not just their favorite holiday but also her daughter's birthday.

But Andrea isn't just some regular gorgeous blonde that your eye would catch if you passed her on the streets - before becoming what she is now which is a clerk at a law firm, Andrea was a black-belt in both karate and taekwondo and was always at the top of her class with every single one of her trophies and achievements on display in her house so it can show her daughter that if you can put your mind to something that you love, you can accomplish anything. Better yet, Andrea was the captain of the cheerleaders in high school throughout and was the best of the best, always noted for her incredible skills, agility and flexibility.

It's all of these things that Andrea is about to find out will all come full-force to her advantage at every possible opportunity there is because her life is about to completely turn upside down for good.

As Sophia is sitting on the floor watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, playing with her pet kitten Esther, Andrea is in the kitchen preparing Christmas cookies (Sophia's favorite kind) while talking with her younger sister on the phone with her shoulder holding it up when all of a sudden, the door bell rings and wonders who on earth could that be at this time.

She opens the door and to her confusement and surprise, there's three pale-skinned teenage girls with sadistic smiles that drool on their faces with a large person-sized bag they're carrying and say "Happy Halloween" before they proceed to kidnap Andrea and bag her.

To her horror, Andrea is brought to what appears to be a hidden world amongst the forests where they bring her to a twisted house on a jagged tree with crooked pipes all over the place. The girls, despite her pleas, shove her right down the biggest chute that she barely fits in. Landing down on a human-sized roulette on her back-first, we're finally introduced at long last to the main antagonist/tritagonist of this film — Verona, a gorgeous, long black-hair down past her shoulders, grey-skin, pitch-black eyes as dark as night, slender, sharp fanged vampire sorceress. Thus "The Verona Song" begins and eventually ends.

Hanging from a hook with her hands tied above and to it, Andrea (though flabbergasted, stunned and beyond horrified) demands to know what's going on, where she is and who are you most of all to the deadly, twisted, sadistic but playful femme fatale Verona. It's after a failed escape attempt that ends with Verona dragging a stuck but close to freedom Andrea back through the chutes that Verona finally reveals her true motivations once and for all —

For years, Verona has been the "Boogeyman" or rather the "Boogeywoman", terrorizing children in their sleep and in their dreams, in their nightmares. She's been the shadows whether it'd be the moonlights or cold alleyways, all the things that go bump in the night and who is the "Who?" when you call "Who's there?". She was tricked into taking over the role of the "Boogeywoman" from the woman before and has now been it for 10 straight years. However, after all this time finally, Verona has become or rather grown bored and unsatisfied with being just the Shadowwoman that lurks and stalks the night, bringing nothing but fear and screams to all the poor children that have met or witnessed her.

She's now tired of being the one who brings nothing but nightmares to children regardless of whether they're innocent or not and has now decided she no longer wants to be this, so she's now set her sights on the one thing that brings joy, cheeriness, laughter, love and happiness to everyone one and all and what used to be her favorite holiday growing up as a child back when she was human — Christmas.

This year, she'll be St. Nicholas. She's made her own sleigh out of disgusting and crooked skeleton bones and a rustic coffin, brought to life her own deformed reindeer whose faces are beginning to rot and melt away and created and wrapped and has already packed several horrific and nightmare-imducing creations with minds of their own that she calls "toys".

And why is Andrea here or what does she even have to do with any of this — because Verona wants a human who was just like her to be the first ever witness to her bringing Christmas celebration to all the boys and girls of all ages.

Obviously leading to a disaster of more-than-epic proportions with Andrea now being the only hope to save this Christmas Eve from an absolute nightmare.

Notes/Trivias/Details:

• Tony Moore's design for the character of Andrea from The Walking Dead comics will be used for the design of Andrea in Twas The Night Before And All Through because not only is too good of a design to just all of a sudden go to waste *snaps* just like that but it fits the character of Andrea here. Plus, not only is her name also being Andrea an in-joke but so will her last name Adlard. It's named after the second Walking Dead comic book artist Charlie Adlard.

• As for Verona, her influences will be quite obvious but she's made in her different way so she can really stand out all on her own into a cool, dastardly villain turned anti-villain turned anti-hero. Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas is the most painfully obvious influence but others that you'll clearly see with her are Eris from the crappy Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas, Selina Kyle/Catwoman from Telltale's Batman series, Poison Ivy from The New Adventures Of Batman & Robin and finally Shego from Kim Possible. The difference with her that makes her standout is that she has a code such as never harming or killing a child or never psychically harms Andrea and instead just toyfully plays with her in the most sick and bombastic ways.

• As for the animation style of it, what I said way above will be exactly like that but with more elaboration on it. In terms of the character designs and action sequences, they'll be an incredibly fluid and expressive without going too overboard take on the artwork of Tony Moore right down to the big upper lips on the women characters since it gives it its own unique style and look to make it stand out all on its own. It's like nightmare-induced horror comic book came to life that just so happened to be taking place and is set on Christmas Eve.

• There's also a strong use of color and contrast, everything involving the outside world is as warm, welcoming and most of all, colorful as can be since it's Christmas and represents the bloody cold on the outside and the refreshing warmth by the fire inside. Meanwhile, all of the things past the forests and with Verona are all the exact opposite - it's dark, gothic, macabre and twisted with any sort of color from here or there popping out.

• What will make this movie stand out is the unexpected ending but hopefully in a good way, in a way that's actually interesting is that after it appears to be finally over with both Verona and Andrea having been shot down and landing in a graveyard by themselves, Verona mourns with her face down having realized her failure and what she's done while an outraged Andrea scolds her for everything she's done. It's then that Verona pins Andrea to the floor and on the verge of tears, tells her she thinks she may know her completely but she's wrong. She had her life stolen away from her by a witch as she was too vain and egomaniacal back then and was punished for the terrible person she was. Now she finally had a chance to do something good for once in her now miserable life, she always remembered the faces that she made as a child whenever she would open up a single present on Christmas Day and wanted to bring that sense of joy to other children that were like her including Andrea's daughter, Sophia.

The two of them manage to reconcile and make an agreement — Andrea uses a spell she discovered to restore all the broken toys and create new ones that this time are wonderful, ordinary Christmas gifts that all children want and she helps Verona deliver the gifts to set things right and save Christmas.

Which is exactly what happens.

After finally reuniting with her daughter who is now in good hands, Andrea finds to her shock yet again that Verona is in her living room and decides to propose another deal and it's this time to Andrea — since she was the only person by far who has actually been able to impress her, that she and Andrea should team up together with Verona now having entirely new ideas on how to terrorize children. A disgusted Andrea rejects this but unfortunately for her, Verona is not taking no for an answer. She lunges towards her and gives Andrea a great big kiss on the lips than her body parts instantly fall apart in a grotesque way and of course, she's still alive and moving. A screaming Andrea runs up to her bedroom with Verona in hot pursuit (especially her head), she makes it but now has to hold the door in terror from opening as Verona and her body parts are trying to open it from the outside all while Sophia, who's sleeping in her mother's bed, wakes up in confusion to see what's going on in front of her.

The camera slowly moves from the inside of Andrea's bedroom where all this horrifying chaos is occurring to the outside and later above view of their neighborhood streets and how the Spirit of Christmas has returned to everyone, especially the good little boys and girls, but unfortunately all at the expense of a young woman named Andrea Adlard.

Now here's the big reveal or surprise:

After the effective final shot of children and adults celebrating and in-joy, cheering now that Christmas is saved with Andrea's screams having fainted away and is no longer heard whatsoever even in the slightest bit possible, it dissolves into a large campfire with a ticking watch clock striking 12 o'clock at midnight being closed and a femme fatale voice going "And that's the end".

The camera pulls up after that to reveal it's none other than Charmcaster from the Ben 10 series, UAF Charmcaster to be specific, telling a rather dark scary campfire story to none other than Gwen Tennyson and her Aunt Sandra Tennyson who are both shocked at how the story was.

It's revealed that Twas The Night Before And All Through was all along a campfire story being told by Charmcaster in an alternate Ben 10 reboot universe.

The reason I'm doing is because there's a few connections here - Andrea's design from Tony Moore's art in Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, Gwen Tennyson has gotten a lot of comparisons to Atom Eve in both Robert Kirkman's Invincible comics and TV show and top it off, I wanted just one more bang for the film and especially the story to leave an impression on you or to whoever watches it if it actually gets made one day hopefully.

Kari Wahlgren, Ashley Johnson and Beth Littleford will obviously reprise their roles as Charmcaster, Gwen and Sandra with the end wraparound being in the same style as UAF but with more expressiveness and fluidity and the setting being a campfire out in the middle of the desert at night. Boy oh boy, that will most likely kill you for real in real fricking life!

#Christmas #horror #the walking dead comics #tony moore #oogie boogie song #gwen tennyson #charmcaster #sandra tennyson

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