After my ‘Happy Christmas’, I’m brought right back down to earth again with A Christmas Horror Story from 2015 and decide that I am now really done with this Krampus character. American movie-makers seem to have really jumped on this idea of the horned, monstrous anti-Santa over the last decade, yet nobody can really figure out anything interesting to do with him.
Here we have another multi-strand narrative horror with five different tales going on at once, most of which don’t really link together at all. It really feels like a case of throwing a whole load of half-cooked ideas into the mix and seeing what sticks. There are very noticeable shifts in tone and quality throughout.
This one opens with an atmospheric but heavily CGI’d sequence of a robed, warrior-like Santa (George Buza) stomping about a gloomy North Pole. Something terrifying is after him , causing him to wave about his not-very-Christmassy big wand/spear thing. In this segment, Santa is doing battle with his own elves who, for some reason, have turned into rabid, flesh-eating zombies. This is by far the hokiest of all the segments, feeling more like a cheap, direct-to-DVD swords and sorcery/Dungeons and Dragons type deal, with lots of fun, gory effects but, sadly, rubbish performances and plenty of unnecessary ‘edgy’ swearing. The target audience for this is clearly the sort of infantile gore hounds who expect, nay demand lots of blood, boobs and profanity.
As a grown-up, this stuff doesn’t appeal to me much anymore, though I do kind of enjoy the way the action at the North Pole escalates to batshit mental incredibly quickly. The reason for all these supernatural shenanigans will be made clear much later on, involving an admittedly effective twist that helps make sense of all the madness. Sadly, the film as a whole feels like too much of a slog to make the big rug-pull feel worth it.
Elsewhere, a family is on the run through a snowy forest after unleashing - yes - the Krampus. The thing with Krampus is that he’s supposed to be a punisher of mean-spirited, horrible people, so the filmmakers feel the need to fill their story with dickish, unlikeable characters. Here, they go to such comical lengths to make the family seem worthy of the beast’s wrath that I’m pleased to see the back of them - the boy tortures cats! The dad is using a vulnerable old relative for money! They must die!!! The dialogue in this bit is awful, though the effects on the beast are pretty cool, even if he’s a lot more effective when kept hidden in the shadows.
The third plot concerns - oh no - some obnoxious teens making a ‘documentary’ in a dark basement haunted by a ghost. This one follows the old cliche of having all the males being slavishly ruled by their penises, leading to horrific consequences. This segment feels like a real cheat, having nothing at all to do with Christmas, while the jump scares are lame and the characters sorely underdeveloped.
There's also the story of a quarrelling mom and dad who, after pinching a Christmas tree off private land, find that their young son may have been ‘replaced’ by a murderous, spooky demon known as a ‘Changeling’.
This segment is, for me, the most effective of all, with some creepy acting from the young kid (Orion John) though his mum and dad react in some absolutely mental ways to their child misbehaving. They seem pretty chill, then suddenly dad’s got his belt off ready to give the lad a leathering for opening his presents early? This feels rushed, like a full ninety minute film would have given more time to flesh out the scenario and mythology and to let these characters breathe.
With so much going on, the film at least never has the chance to get dull and the various stories allow them to pile in more gore and ‘scares’, even if this comes at the cost of giving us characters we could give a damn about.
William Shatner serves as a fifth component in this horror compendium, playing a bored-sounding radio DJ, periodically commenting on some disturbing stuff that’s going down in the town where all this takes place. It seems his bits have little to do with the other stories, though a mildly shocking reveal is saved for later that is interesting even if it doesn’t entirely work. Shatner as ‘DJ Dan’ is, unfortunately, one of the dullest disc jockeys you’ve ever heard and was likely included to give them a ‘marquee name’ to help sell the film. It’s really not enough and I sure hope this is the last crappy Christmas horror I have to endure this year.
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