Stab 3: Holiday Horror

A year after her brother was convicted of a brutal killing spree, Cassie Kennedy returns home to prove his innocence. But when her brother escapes from prison and a new string of murders begin, Cassie starts to wonder if there really is no place like home for the holidays.

A year after her brother was convicted of a brutal killing spree, Cassie Kennedy comes home to prove he is innocent. Then her brother escapes from prison, a new string of murders starts, and Cassie begins to wonder if there really is no place like home for the holidays.

One year earlier, on Christmas Eve, Ava Foster gets a wrong-number call at her Manchester house while her friend Lucy Walker is upstairs. The caller wants to play a game called Kill or Be Killed: kill your friend and live, or he kills you both. Ava refuses. The caller tells Lucy that Ava agreed to kill her, and Lucy comes after Ava with a corkscrew. Ava kills Lucy to save herself, and a man in the ghost costume tells her, "Welcome to the family." Lucy's boyfriend Mason Kennedy walks in, sees Ava over the body and attacks her. Detective Jack Hudson arrives, arrests Mason, and pins the whole Christmas killing spree on him.

A year later Mason's sister Cassie comes home from California to spend Christmas with her adopted brother Aiden Price and his boyfriend Wyatt Ross. Cassie still believes Mason is innocent. Her old best friend Emma Barnes told the news she thought Mason did it, and Emma later had a baby with Cassie's boyfriend, Liam Olson. At Emma's house, Emma, Kinsley Reed and Kinsley's girlfriend Harper Evans learn that Aiden is throwing Cassie a welcome home party on Christmas Eve. The news reports that Mason has escaped during a prison transfer, and the two officers guarding him were found with their throats slit. Reporter Kylie Scott covers the story.

Detective Jack Hudson and his new partner, Detective Nolan Pierce, stake out Aiden's house. Nolan's parents were the first victims of the spree, and he thinks Mason may be innocent. That night, twins Chloe and Colton Chase, home from Los Angeles, get the Kill or Be Killed call in their hotel room. Neither will kill the other, and Ghost Face murders them both, finishing Colton in the shower in a tribute to Psycho. Jack finds security footage of the same mask Mason wore and is sure Mason is back.

Liam shows up at Aiden's, saying his father, a top lawyer, could help Mason, then hinting that Cassie has to earn it. Aiden throws him out. Cassie gets a call from someone pretending to be Mason, then finds Ava at her door. Ava confesses that she killed Lucy, not Mason, and that Mason only choked her after he found her. She says the man in the costume that night was too short to be Mason. She has hacked the police database and found that a gas station on the other side of town may have security footage proving Mason's alibi. Cassie brings Ava to the party first. Liam shows up at Emma's to see his daughter Lily. After he leaves, Ghost Face attacks Emma in her basement and lets her live only after she promises to kill Liam by midnight. In the stakeout car, Jack admits his own wife and son were the second set of victims. He changed their names on the report so he could stay on the case.

The party runs past midnight and Ghost Face shows up dressed as Santa. Harper walks outside after a fight with Kinsley, refuses to kill her, and is killed with an icicle. Liam crashes the party and gets into a fistfight with Aiden. Emma poisons Liam's drink with mistletoe, but Liam says he got a call too and was handed a knife, and he stabs her to death in the snow. Jack chases a figure in the ghost costume outside. The killer holds Nolan at knifepoint and tells Jack to kill his partner. Jack shoots Nolan, and the killer slits Jack's throat. Inside, a lingering partygoer is killed by Santa Ghost Face. Cassie and Ava leave for the gas station. Wyatt finds Aiden tied up with the killer in the room. Told to kill Aiden or die, Wyatt frees him instead, and Aiden stabs Wyatt to death, saying he can't be with someone who isn't willing to kill.

At the boarded-up gas station Cassie has a bad feeling and makes Ava drive back to Aiden's. Stoners Xander Moore and Charlotte Valentine get a call from "Mason" in Xander's shed. They refuse the game, and the killer stabs Xander in the neck with a piece of his broken bong and chases Charlotte down with a shovel while singing Jingle Bells. Back at the house, a bleeding Aiden says the killer stabbed him, then takes their phones and pulls a gun. He admits he is the killer and that he was the caller who forced Ava to kill Lucy. He says the game was also played on the other victims, and Liam killed Emma after she poisoned him. Kinsley walks in as his partner and shoots Ava.

Aiden and Kinsley bring out Mason, beaten and tied up. Mason tells the story. Cassie, Mason, Aiden and Kinsley are all siblings, born to a murder cult. Police killed their parents and the children were adopted out to different families. Mason was taught to kill and did kill the first six victims the year before. Aiden caught him, wanted to kill too, and Mason trained him. When they found Kinsley, they trained her as well. Mason has since refused to kill, so the others broke him out to frame him for everything. The killers shoot Ava dead. They bring out Liam and tell Cassie she must kill him to join the family, or they will kill Mason. Cassie stabs Liam to death, then turns the knife on Aiden and kills him. Kinsley shoots Mason in the head, saying Cassie killed her brother so she killed Cassie's.

Cassie and Kinsley fight through the house with breakable beer bottles, a punch bowl and torn-down curtains. Kinsley stabs Cassie several times. Cassie grabs a unicorn head decoration, stabs Kinsley to death with it in a Black Christmas tribute, and quotes Home Alone: "Merry Christmas, you filthy animal." Then Cassie bleeds out and dies. None of the main characters make it out alive.

Release & Reception

• Distributor: YouTube (StabMovies channel) and StabMovies.com

The film was announced for October 1, 2023, but went up on YouTube and the site the evening of September 30, 2023.

By September 2026 the full movie had about 439,000 views, more than Stab (2020) or Stab 2.

In the commentary Joshua Patrick Dudley says some fans wrote in wanting fewer digital effects, and that many fans said the Chase twins look like real siblings.

Cast

Crew

Production

Joshua Patrick Dudley says in his commentary that he had a couple of other ideas for Stab 3 but got stuck on how much he loved the Home Alone tribute at the end of Stab 2. He decided to make a Christmas movie, which he had never seen done with Scream or Stab. The story isn't connected to the other films. The Kill or Be Killed game came from being tired of Ghost Face asking about favorite scary movies, so here the killer also asks about favorite Christmas movies.

Casting opened August 24, 2022, two months before Stab 2 came out. On November 26, 2022 the site said casting was done and pre-production had started. Jamie-Lynn Hazzard was first set for a different part. When another actress had to drop out, she moved to Harper and someone new took the other role. Mia Gaudette stepped in as the news reporter at the last minute after the actress cast in that part quit.

The first teaser poster went up December 1, 2022, confirming a Christmas movie for 2023. More teaser posters followed December 9 and December 21, 2022, and the last one asked fans to back an Indiegogo campaign. A December 14, 2022 short showed the NewRuleFX stage blood the team planned to use.

Filming started January 20, 2023. The site posted the first shot the day before and said the snowy setting set the Christmas mood. The commentary says there was a blizzard almost every filming day, so Joshua kept going out to grab shots of snowy Manchester whenever he needed them. The actors had to run across snow and ice in several scenes.

The opening was supposed to be shot at Ashley Swank's house, but she and her husband had just had COVID, so Joshua rented a house about three hours north and decorated it for Christmas. Both detectives' scenes were shot back to back in one day. Daylen Casteel and Katrina Chamberlain rehearsed the hotel scene the night before, and Rachel Alexandria Arnold came to run the camera because nobody else was free to wear the costume, so Joshua played the killer. The whole finale was shot in about 11 hours in one day.

Some scenes were reshot. The first version of Cassie's first night at the house was filmed at the end of a long day while a heavy blizzard came in, and it was rushed, so the whole scene was redone. Parts of the breakfast scene with Liam were also reshot, and Joshua matched the props on the counter by hand. The raw footage uploads include a reel called The Party and Reshoots.

The actors kept their phones switched off during filming because the screens caused problems on camera, and phone screens were added in later. Joshua says he spent more on this film than usual: he bought better-quality costumes, the Santa suits and Mason's jumpsuit, and a lot of Christmas decorations. The cast supplied many of their own outfits. Matthew Arseneault, whom Joshua met on the set of a movie called Honeydew, filmed almost every scene Joshua was in and got an assistant director credit. Joshua also let him help direct the party scenes.

A poster with the whole cast went up February 3, 2023, and new stills on February 16. The teaser trailer (March 6) and another poster (March 15) set the premiere for October 1, 2023. The official trailer came out July 30, 2023.

Filming locations

• Manchester, New Hampshire: Home base of the shoot; city and Christmas tree shots
• A rented Airbnb about three hours north of Joshua's home: Ava's house in the opening
• Joshua Patrick Dudley's apartment: Aiden and Wyatt's house, the party and the finale; the loft doubled as the inside of the stoners' shed
• Emilee Powell's house: Emma's house, including the basement attack
• A hotel: The Chase twins' room and the hallway security footage
• Top level of a parking garage: The mall parking lot where Kinsley and Harper meet Xander and Charlotte, shot at golden hour with the top level closed off. The mall seen in the shot is in New York
• A boarded-up 7-Eleven under renovation: The abandoned gas station
• A real shed: Outside of Xander and Charlotte's shed
• A real street: The detectives' stakeout car

Effects and makeup

The corkscrew stabbing in the opening was done practically, with real blood on the sweater, and digital blood spray was added on top.

Harper's kill needed a lot of digital blood because the crew forgot to hit most of her wounds with practical blood on set. The icicles behind her were fake, made from plastic wrap and hot glue.

In the detectives' death scene the killer used a foam knife for safety on the ice. Jack's throat slit is mostly digital because it was too cold to rig blood tubes on the actors.

Xander's bong was smashed practically but didn't break right, so it was fixed digitally, and blood squirts were added. Joshua calls Charlotte's shovel death his favorite digital effects shot: the shovel, an arm and hand, the head's position and extra blood were all changed.

Anna Belmonte did Mason's bruises and bloody head. The duct tape over mouths was double-sided so it didn't stick to skin. Mason's head wound used prosthetics, and the pool of blood was digital. A gorier version of Ava's death showed brains on the door, but Joshua toned it down.

Close-up stabs into Cassie were a mannequin stabbed by Corey Dudley. The close-up stabs into Kinsley were Corey's son Ethan stabbing a mannequin in Erika Otte's costume.

A digital effects artist, thanked but not named in the commentary, did the title sequence, blood and phone screens. Joshua added the snow to the subtitle himself.

Props and costumes

Santa Ghost Face was designed by Jose A. Sepulveda Jr., with color and detail changes from Joshua Patrick Dudley, and Jose made the costume. He also made the candy cane knife Liam uses and the unicorn head prop from the ending.

The large knife in the hotel shower scene is the knife from the original Stab poster, made by Burkbench Designs. The knife left in Chloe was a foam knife glued to cardboard.

Kinsley and Aiden wear matching Santa outfits at the party as a clue that they are a team. Harper is also dressed a little like Santa.

The Good Guys doll Kinsley buys for Cassie is a nod to Chucky. The gingerbread house in Aiden's kitchen is cardboard covered in real candy.

NewRuleFX supplied stage blood and breakable beer bottles for the final fight. The punch bowl was bought for the drowning gag.

Screen used props and costumes went on sale in the StabMovies.com store on October 1, 2023, the day after release.

Production

Casting opened on August 24, 2022 while Stab 3 was still being written. Pre-production started on November 26, 2022. Teaser posters went up on December 1, December 9 and December 21, 2022.

Filming began on January 20, 2023. It was shot in the snow for the Christmas setting, which means the film was made in the middle of a New Hampshire winter and held back nine months for a fall release.

Another poster came on February 3, new images on February 16, the teaser trailer on March 6 and one more poster on March 15, 2023. Props and costumes from the film went on sale the day it came out.

The killers

Deaths

Score by Seth Hise, who also scored Stab 2.

The party scenes use older songs recorded by Joshua Patrick Dudley because the team couldn't find party music that was safe from YouTube copyright claims. They are "Yummies," with raps by Steve Matluk and Chris Dube, who played the killers in Stab 5; "Lose My Mind," the end credits song from Stab 6; and an unreleased song called "Come Get It."

Rachel Alexandria Arnold sings the Christmas songs throughout the film, including "In the Bleak Midwinter" over the opening and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" near the end.

Justin Howdyshell recorded a slasher version of Jingle Bells for the Charlotte chase, plus extra joke lines that went unused.

• Script paperback through Lulu (2023).

STABFLIX

Watch the film

Bonus features and videos

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Stab 3: Holiday Horror Teaser Trailer

StabMovies.com

The teaser for the Christmas one.

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Stab 3: Holiday Horror Trailer

StabMovies.com

The full trailer.

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Stab 3: Holiday Horror with Commentary

StabMovies.com

The whole film again with the commentary track over it.

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Stab 3: Holiday Horror Kill Count

StabMovies.com

SPOILERS

Every death in the film, counted and shown back to back.

Playlists

• The bonus features playlist

Gallery

Posters

Stills

Promotional Images

Behind the Scenes