Adam Marcus moves on from Jason and Leatherface to Secret Santa

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

It's a controversial installment in the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise, but JASON GOES TO HELL will always have a special place in my heart because its 1993 release was a major event in my chilhood. Released twenty years later, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D also provides me with some fun slasher entertainment, and I can let that questionable continuity slide.

What do these films have in common? The participation of Adam Marcus, who directed JASON GOES TO HELL and co-wrote TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D. After crafting new chapters in the stories of slasher icons Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, Marcus is once again heading into horror territory, this time with an original project titled SECRET SANTA. (Not to be confused with the SECRET SANTA film we covered last month.)

Directed by Marcus from a screenplay he wrote with his wife/TEXAS CHAINSAW co-writer Debra Sullivan, SECRET SANTA has the following synopsis: 

Welcome to Christmas Dinner at the Popes. As dysfunctional and tension causing as your family’s holiday celebration. Except tonight something is different. Tonight, for some unknown reason, everyone decides to say what they think about each other. What they REALLY think about each other. All the ugly truths they’ve been hiding for years start splattering the table, like spoiled gravy. It isn’t long until saying what you want to, becomes doing what you want to…

Always wanted to kill your uncle for his racist remarks?  Go ahead, do it. Make your little brother eat his words, or his own tongue? You outweigh him, go for it. Wanted to dismember mom or dad for questioning your life choices when they’ve made the exact same choices? Just let them try and stop you.

Secret Santa lays bare all the false veneers we hide behind and shows who we really are beneath it… vicious, murderous, sick and twisted.  

A Leslie Kies, Drew Lynch, Michael Rady, Ryan Leigh Seaton, Nathan Hedrick, Michelle Allaire, John Gilbert, Curtis Fortier, Pat Destro, and Sullivan star.

SECRET SANTA has a nice, twisted concept, and judging by the teaser and trailer below it looks like Marcus has turned it into a film that will be a bloody good time to watch. Thanks to the impact JASON GOES TO HELL had on my youth, I will always see anything he makes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing this.