Adult Swim’s first live-action feature is an exercise in “What the hell did I just see?” The second your mind took care of a crazy twist, Yule log is back with another hairpin turn. That goes for both the plot of this film and the flourishes in the background that hide two very specific Easter eggs from writer-director Casper Kelly. spoilers ahead.
Yule log begins as a peaceful video of a crackling fire. But as the film’s minutes spiral into chaos, multiple people are murdered, a masked serial killer lurks in the shadows, and an Airbnb double-booking goes horribly wrong. It’s an intentionally bizarre film that refuses to take your foot off the accelerator. But even against this intense backdrop, the film is a nod to Kelly’s viral short “Too Many Cooks” is particularly wild.
About halfway through the film, the stoner character (Skye Passmore) sees a little man (Michael Reagan) standing on top of the still burning and cursed Christmas log. At first it is assumed that this little man is nothing more than a hallucination. But once our stoner manages to successfully crawl down the chimney, it’s clear that never happened. The man in the chimney is very real on some level. As he shows the stoner a number of different chimneys from different places and times, a surprising cameo appears: the killer from Too Many Cooks.
There’s the killer (William Tokarsky), who lounges casually in an armchair, probably after murdering terrified people in another series.
But Kelly confirmed to Decider that that wasn’t the only nod to his work hiding in this micro-budget film. “Another Easter egg is the allspice cheese brand. It’s the same brand, almost the same brand as Cheddar Goblin Cheddar Cheese,” Kelly said, referring to it The advertising he directed Panos Cosmotos Mandy. “We couldn’t legally do it exactly like that, but it’s very close.”
The allspice scene in question takes place between Yule log’s lead actor Alex (Justin Miles) and the hillbilly mother (Tordy Clark) bother Alex and his girlfriend. While her deranged son decides which woman to attack, the mother feeds Alex a mouthful of gooey pimento cheese piled on a knife. It’s a deeply disturbing scene, especially if you’re not a fan of pimento cheese. “The actors went into it,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t in the script.”