Filthy Review - 'Holliston: The Complete First Season'

Holliston: The Complete First Season (2012)

Review by Jude Felton

Holliston is the brainchild of directors’ Adam Green and Joe Lynch, and attempts to take the sitcom world and throw it a little bit of genre love. It originally screened on FearNET and follows Adam and Joe as they shuffle through life in a slackerish manner, and occasionally it works. Then again it also falls short on many occasions.

Adam Green is a strange beast, or should I say that his output is. I mean, I love Frozen with a passion, and I think his Halloween short films are good fun. Hatchet was decent, although I thought the sequel was very poor aside from some great gore. There’s just something about him that rubs me up the wrong way though, and this does come through in Holliston. Joe Lynch, on the other hand, gave us the uber-fun Wrong Turn 2, and seems more at ease in this TV format, which seems to come across as a blend of The Big Bang Theory, The 70s Show and any other sitcom in which a great deal of time is spent on a couch.

Adam and Joe host a late night horror cable show, which screens old horror movies, for a station that is run by Lance Rockett (Dee Snider), and follows there day to day exploits. This basically means they tend to get into stupid situations a lot, and Adam spends most of his time trying to win back his ex-girlfriend. Oh, and Oderus Urungus from GWAR pops up a lot.

Holliston is typical sitcom faire, albeit with slightly more blood, guts and other bodily fluids on display, but essentially it runs to a tried and tested format, it even comes with canned laughter. The main problem being with Holliston is that a lot of the jokes don’t work, and fall somewhat flatly, when they should be raising belly laughs. Then again, there are a few moments of comedic genius, although I found these to be few and far between.

It’s not a bad show, and I did watch a few when they were on FearNET, it’s just not that great. Now, there will be a decent size audience that will lap this up; I am sure the Hatchet Army will think it is the second coming. A more realistic view of the show is that you can tell it is a first season, and that comes complete with growing pains, as they test out ideas. Hopefully in the second season, and I do hope there will be a second season, there will be better quality control in the joke department.

What Holliston does give us is a cool array of guest stars, from Ray Wise to Derek Mears and even Victor Crowley making an appearance. These are distractions though from the main storylines, and shouldn’t be viewed as highlights. One highlight being Dee Snider’s rocking performance as Lance (his metal double step in the bloopers is hilarious), as the lads’ boss who also fronts his own metal band.

The Blu-ray release does come with a decent array of extras included, but these can’t hide the fact that for the most part Hoilliston is average at best, when it should be a bloody riot.

Holliston: The Complete First Season is released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 9th by Image Entertainment.