TV spotlight

Rockwall holiday spectacle battles on TV's Great Christmas Light Fight

A family in Rockwall is charged up and ready to vie for holiday light supremacy: Brenda and David Hughes will compete on the season 12 premiere of ABC's holiday competition show The Great Christmas Light Fight on Thursday, December 5.

The Hugheses will duel with three other families around the country for a trophy, $50,000, and over-the-rooftop bragging rights. The episode will air at 7 pm on WFAA-Channel 8. (It will be followed by another episode, at 8 pm, which will feature a McKinney family.)

Host Carter Oosterhouse and a crew filmed at the Hughes’ home over three days in November 2023, and the family has had to keep details under wraps for more than a year.

Great Christmas Light Fight, Hughes, Rockwall, Stay in the Light, Christmas lights display Brenda and David Hughes with Great Christmas Light Fight host Carter Oosterhouse during filming.Photo courtesy of ABC

Their holiday extravaganza features more than 150,000 lights on every groundcover and all over their house. What really sets it apart, says Brenda Hughes, is a larger-than-life “Candy Land.” Inside the magical candy store are candy canes, cupcakes, elves, gingerbread people, a hot air balloon, and more.

“They loved our set-up because it was classic Christmas,” Brenda says of the show's cast and crew. “One producer went on and on about how classic everything was and how ‘clean’ everything was.”

Towering over it all are two majestic oak trees in the front yard, each lit up with more than 15,000 twinkling lights. “They loved our trees, because you can’t buy those 150-year-old oak trees,” Brenda says.

Staying in the Light
Behind the sparkle and shine of the Hughes’ happy holiday display are memories of darker days for the family. They’re grateful the show allowed them to share that part of their story, too.

The Hugheses call their annual display “Stay in the Light” in honor of Brenda’s son Nathaniel, who, in 2019, “passed away suddenly and tragically after a battle with depression,” his mother says tenderly. He was 29.

The first holiday season after Nathaniel’s death, to bring Brenda a bit of joy, David bought a beautiful decorative swan and built it a “pond” in the front yard. It was a loving gesture, but no amount of light, Brenda thought, would bring her out of the black hole she felt she’d fallen in.

“One night I was having a really rough night, it was 3 o’clock in the morning and I was crying my eyes out,” Brenda says. “I went outside and I was 'talking' to Nathaniel, and I just looked at the little sparkling swan pond and it just made me stop for a minute. And somehow those lights and that swan pond - it was like magic - that’s the only word I can use: ‘magic.’ I went from tears to overwhelming peace.”

Great Christmas Light Fight, Hughes, Rockwall, Stay in the Light, Christmas lights display The display started with a decorative swan, which needed a pond, which needed a river.Photo courtesy of Hughes family

In 2020, they strung more lights around the house, and visitors started to come. They decided to parlay the interest into a real fundraiser and connected with Meals on Wheels of Rockwall County.

In 2021, the “Stay in the Light” display raised $1,200 for Meals on Wheels; in 2022, they gave $5,000 and in 2023, $15,000. Now, the Hugheses have pledged $50,000 over five years toward the construction of a Meals on Wheels community center. They also collect toys for Children’s Medical Center Dallas.

“It gives me a purpose now instead of staying in a dark place; I’m now able to bring my darkness into the light,” Brenda says. “That’s how we came up with the name ‘Stay in the Light,' because a lot of people during the holidays are in a very dark place, but when you come here - now we’re at 150,000 lights - you’re not gonna be in a dark place.”

TV glow-up
The Great Christmas Light Fight first reached out to the Hugheses in December 2022. David and Brenda made up a festive skit for a Zoom audition and wasted no time planning their 2023 display - just in case.

“We had to up the ante,” Brenda says. “I spent my whole summer cutting out 300 flowers from Solo cups and attaching light bulbs in them so they’d glow like a meadow.”

In September 2023, they got confirmed for the show. Their display, which normally takes three months to set up, had to be TV-ready by November. It took two weeks just to hang lights in trees using a rented cherry picker.

Then a month before filming, Brenda fell off a chair and broke her tailbone. While convalescing indoors, she constructed “Candy Land” pieces - Jolly Ranchers out of corsage boxes, lollipops out of pool noodles, and cupcakes out of spackle and paint. David largely managed the set-up with help from their grown kids and an army of friends.

Great Christmas Light Fight, Hughes, Rockwall, Stay in the Light, Christmas lights display Host Carter Oosterhouse checks out Candy Land.Photo courtesy of ABC

The film crew arrived November 21, 2023 and set up in the backyard. During their three days of filming, the Hugheses say, the cast and crew became like family, always reassuring them when they got “jitterbugs” about being on TV.

“It was a lot of pressure, but I would do it again,” Brenda says. “It was a great time that I will cherish that memory forever.”

The show's outcome is a secret until it airs. If David and Brenda win The Great Christmas Light Fight, they’ll fulfill the rest of their $50,000 pledge to Meals on Wheels, they say. “And we’d probably just keep the rest to buy more Christmas stuff,” Brenda jokes.

Win or lose on TV, David and Brenda will welcome visitors to their display each night from December 1 to Christmas Day 2024 (weather permitting). They hope their lights can spark joy for others like they did for Brenda in that first holiday season after Nathaniel’s passing.

“No matter what, you’re gonna leave here happy,” Brenda says. “On the show, we say, ‘We’re the Hughes family and we invite you to stay in the light.’ Our mission is to spread joy and light.”

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The Great Christmas Light Fight season premiere airs at 7 pm Thursday, December 5 on ABC (available on Hulu the next day). The Hughes' “Stay in the Light” display is at 1655 Plummer Dr., Rockwall, in The Shores subdivision. It runs nightly 6-10 pm, December 1-25. For more information on local Christmas lights, go here and here.

Great Christmas Light Fight, Hughes, Rockwall, Stay in the Light, Christmas lights display

Photo courtesy of ABC/Great Christmas Light Fight

The Hughes family's light display in Rockwall will compete on ABC's Great Christmas Light Fight on December 5, 2024.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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