Have a bloody good holiday.
Despite only just entering October with 20-something days still to go until Halloween, A Christmas Horror Story is here to look at the joy of Christmas through the lens of bloodshed one typically associates with Halloween. While certainly not a new concept, A Christmas Horror Story manages to buck enough expectations and deliver enough clever twists – not to mention a whole lot of gore – to be worth your time.
As one might suspect by its three directors (Steven Hoban, Grant Harvey, and Brett Sullivan), this is an anthology-style horror flick a la Trick ‘r’ Treat, though unfortunately lacking the “intertwining” aspects that the promotional materials of the film would have you believe. The stories and characters are indeed connected, but “intertwined” is a stretch: some characters know each other, established in the very beginning, but their paths never cross again nor is it even relevant to the larger story. The town of Bailey Downs as a whole seems cursed with some very bad karma, but beyond that, there is little to connect the threads.
This is the source of the only real problems with A Christmas Horror Story (other than some predictably hammy acting): the structure feels like a disservice to the otherwise solid stories rather than a benefit. The movie cuts between all of these threads without any real segues, so instead of a cohesive movie, it often feels like you’re flipping between episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. In fact, the tones of particular stories are wildly different and often makes this matter worse.
That being said, taken on their own, most of the tales are bizarre and scary fun in their own way. There are four different threads through the movie: an upper-middle class family facing off with Krampus, Santa Claus battling a hoard of zombie elves, a young couple that finds their son possessed, and a group of teenagers snooping around the site of a grisly murder that took place the previous Christmas.
All of these stories are interspersed with the occasional appearance of William Shatner as radio DJ Dangerous Dan, who sits drinking alone in a booth talking to us, the viewers, as though we’re tuning into his broadcast. Thus the reason the movie feels all over the place tonally; the Krampus and Santa stories are firmly in camp territory while the other two are going for genuine scares. Meanwhile, Shatner provides a bit of levity. While this variation in tone doesn’t work in the movie’s favor, most of these stories are so fun on their own that it’s forgivable to some degree.
The only thread that’s really lacking is the family’s fight against Krampus. They are given an elaborate and boring back story that is ineffective, and they manage to be the least connected to the overarching saga of Bailey Downs. We care so little about these people that even watching them be cannon fodder is uninteresting and the kills are typical B-movie fare. This is also the main focus of poor acting; Jeff Clarke is given no favors in the writing of his paper-thin father character, but he does little to enhance the material.
Thankfully, the remaining stories are a blast. Santa’s plight against the elves is an Evil Dead-style gorefest that makes up for the lack of clever kills in the Krampus plot. Best of all, it features one hell of a twist ending that is legitimately surprising and manages to make sense of quite a few things that seemed problematic on the journey there. Similarly, the three teens out to document the scene of two grisly murders is chock full of genuinely creepy moments and fun scares; this segment is full of instances where the filmmakers know exactly what the audience is expecting and work hard to subvert those expectations. There is plenty of disturbing imagery to go along with the jump-scares for an experience that probably could’ve been a movie all on its own, or at least a great episode of The X-Files.
But the gem of the four stories is that of a cop – the same cop who, a year earlier, investigated the deaths that the teens are now interested in – and his family. After cutting down a Christmas tree on private property, the couple’s young son begins acting strangely – violently – and the horror ensues. There are a few moments that tread a little too far into over-the-top territory, but this tale remains surprisingly grounded. There’s a subtext of domestic terror that helps to sell the more supernatural elements of the story, with characters that are planted firmly in reality… which makes it all the more terrifying when things start to get weird. It’s a very simple but incredibly effective yarn that, like the teenagers’ story, could’ve been justified as its own movie.
A Christmas Horror Story is now in theaters and available on VOD and iTunes.
A Christmas Horror Story is a lovely surprise just in time for Halloween (or Christmas) that manages to overcome its problems with tone and pacing for an enjoyable, bloody experience. It runs the gamut of cheesy gore to genuine terror, but as long as you can manage the quick changes in tone, you’ll have a blast. Plus: one of the best twist endings since The Sixth Sense.
