Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out
Written and Directed by Casper Kelly
Starring Andrea Laing, Michael Shenefelt, Sharon Blackwood, Asher Alexander
Runtime: 1 hour and 28 minutes
Now streaming on Max and adultswim.com

by Christopher La Vigna, Staff Writer

In 2022, Adult Swim seemed to be in a particularly fallow creative period. The crippling waves of layoffs and project cancellations brought about by mergers with companies like AT&T and Discovery had left all of the company’s brands looking worse for wear. Even Adult Swim, which always operated on tight margins, seemed to be hollowed out by the austerity imposed by David Zaslav and his fellow executives.

Then, like a dark gift from the gods, the surprise holiday horror movie The Adult Swim Yule Log (aka The Fireplace) premiered on December 11th of that year, and was immediately a hit among lovers of surrealism, horror, and pitch black humor. This makes all these sense in the world when you realize that it was written and directed by Casper Kelly, the delightfully unhinged filmmaker who gave us such classic works of art as the viral hit Too Many Cooks, Final Deployment 4, and, along with Adult Swim OG Dave Willis, the criminally underrated demonic workplace comedy Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell. Kelly had long established his voice, one that is keen on exploring some of the most uncomfortable facets of the human condition through the tropes and film and television. With the inaugural Adult Swim Yule Log, he managed to subvert the broadcast TV tradition of a yule log and use it as a springboard for a narrative that managed to deliver scathing commentary on American racism and bigotry, while also including subplots involving backwoods serial killers, sentient killer logs, and even malevolent aliens.

With the sequel, Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out, which premiered this past Friday with little to no promotion, Kelly and company return to the world they’d created and left in chaos at the first film’s conclusion. Zoe (Andrea Lang) has managed to survive her encounter with the killer log from the haunted cabin and, after recovering from her injuries and grieving the death of her fiancé, she returns to her job at a nonprofit dedicated to saving the coral reef, with an emotional support axe in tow. When Zoey’s friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson) suggests a trip to help her clear her mind, Zoey finds herself stranded in a town that seems to be ground zero for every Hallmark Christmas movie ever made. The colors are bright and cheery, the soundtrack is overwhelmed by light, chipper music, and Zoe can’t walk more than a few steps without literally getting knocked off her feet by a shirtless hunk. Though she remains motivated to get the hell out of town ASAP (they’re gearing up for the big annual Yule Log festival, after all), Zoe soon finds herself falling for Birt (Michael Shenefelt)—short for “Birthday Card”—a handsome widower who owns a struggling ornament shop. But while Zoe seems to slowly succumb to the small-town charms of Birt and his wholesome family, the killer log begins closing in on her, still carrying a torch for the one victim who got away…

The film plays around a lot with the perception, and how fluid it can be between two people who are sharing the same moment. Anytime Zoe finds herself feeling frightened or paranoid, the aspect ratio takes on a letterboxed look, the color palette becomes desaturated, and the bright music turns discordant and tense (courtesy of Room 237 composer Johnathan Snipes). But whenever the coast clears, the colors warm up, the music mellows out, and the picture jumps back into the full frame view indicative of the TV movie world we’re meant to be in. Zoe is obviously still traumatized by the paranormal slaughter she survived in the prior film, and it takes very little to trigger her trauma response. In one particularly disquieting dinner scene, we see the frame split in half—Zoe sits on one side of the table firmly trapped in the world of a horror movie, while her date sits in the carefree comfort of a colorful holiday film.

According to Kelly, this simple but effective visual language was the idea of Alex Allgood, the film’s cinematographer. While it might not be subtle, it’s an excellent way to explore the film’s central theme: perception, both its fluidity and its power. Zoe can choose to keep living in the bleak world of a horror movie, haunted by an absurd entity that is the embodiment of pain and hate, or she can choose the hope and joy of a low stakes hallmark movie. I think even the edgiest of edge lords would have to admit that when push comes to shove, they’d rather live in the latter.

Perhaps the most subversive part of Branchin’ Out is that fact that Kelly dares to poke fun at those tried-and-true wholesome Hallmark movie cliches, while at the same time portraying them as… kind of nice, actually? Birt and the other small-town characters could so easily be thin, grating caricatures of these low budget holiday TV staples, but instead the script and the actors approach it earnestly. You’ll find yourself actively rooting for Zoe to fall in love with Birt and help him successfully recreate his wife’s recipe for… shrimp fudge. Which is why when the Log inevitably does reappear and wreak bloody havoc, you’ll find yourself genuinely heartbroken, and deeply invested in seeing Zoe rid herself of this curse once and for all.

Those who enjoyed the biting social commentary of The Fireplace might feel dismayed by Branchin’ Out’s focus on satirizing Hallmark movie tropes, but those willing to go along for the ride will be rewarded with a story that is also completely insane, but in a more humorous and perhaps character-focused way. Kelly still pulls out some wild left turns though—there’s a sequence that functions as an inversion of the infamous “into the fireplace” sequences from the first film, and a harrowing scene that involves Birt trying to help Zoe heal by subjecting her to a DIY Voight-Kampff test (don’t ask, just watch it).

The Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out is definitely more humorous than its predecessor, but when it wants to hit, it hits hard, making it feel rightfully earned when Zoe finally gets a happy ending… or so it seems. Kelly has also made it clear that he’s open to making another sequel, if not outright planning one now, so it remains to be seen if Zoe and The Log will be going toe-to-toe once more. Making a sequel to such a fatalistic film as The Fireplace already seems insane, to stretch it into a trilogy seems damn near impossible. But if anybody can do it, it’s Casper Kelly and his team, who have proven that they’re both capable and willing to take their demons, muses, and weirdest tangents to the limit. Zoe can try to forget the past, but The Log remembers…