Despite having only just entered October with 20-something days to go until Halloween, A Christmas Horror Story is here to view the joy of Christmas through Halloween’s bloodshed lens. Despite not being a new concept, A Christmas Horror Story is still worth checking out as it defies enough expectations and has clever twists plus a lot of gore.
It’s three directors (Steven Hoban, Grant Harvey, and Brett Sullivan) might give you an idea that this is an anthology-style horror flick in the same vein as Trick ‘r’ Treat but without all those “interweaving” aspects that its promotional materials would like you to believe. The stories and characters are connected though “intertwined” is stretching it a bit: some characters know one another from the beginning but they don’t meet again or do anything significant in relation to the larger story. In fact, the place itself –Bailey Downs – seems repelled by very bad luck but beyond that there isn’t much uniting them.
But these are really the only things wrong with A Christmas Horror Story (except for some obviously cheesy acting): rather than bringing benefit to otherwise sound stories, its structure seems to be doing injustice upon them. The movie jumps from one thread into another without proper segues; hence instead of a cohesive film, it gives off an impression of switching between episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Moreover, tones for such specific stories differ greatly most often worsening this matter.
That said however, on their own most of these tales are weirdly scary fun. There are four threads running through the movie: an upper-middle class family facing off with Krampus; Santa Claus pitted against a horde of zombie-elves; a young couple encountering their possessed son; and finally a gang of teenagers who decide to snoop around at where a gruesome murder took place last Christmas.
All these stories are occasionally interrupted by William Shatner as a radio DJ Dangerous Dan who is sitting alone in a booth drinking and talking to us, the viewers, just as if we are tuning into his broadcast. This is why the film feels all over the place tonally; while the Krampus and Santa stories are both campy, the other two are going for genuine scares. Meanwhile, Shatner brings some humor into it. This variation of tone isn’t in favor of the movie but for most cases it’s forgivable since most of these stories are fun on their own.
The only thread that’s really lacking is the family’s fight against Krampus. They suffer from an overcomplicated and boring backstory that does not work, making them least connected with Bailey Downs set-up story arc. These characters are so uninteresting that even watching them become cannon fodder is dull and they die in typical B-movie fashion. It also happens to be where terrible acting mainly occurs; Jeff Clarke receives no help from his paper-thin father character, although he doesn’t do much to make it better too.
It is good to note that the few stories left are awesome. Santa’s showdown with the elves is a bloodbath in Evil Dead-style, which more than makes up for Krampus’ lack of clever kills. Moreover, it ends with a hell of a twist that is actually surprising and helps make sense out some elements that might have seemed problematic on the way there. Similarly, three teenagers who go to document the site of two brutal murders has many creepy moments and fun scares; this unit has several situations where the filmmakers seem to know what exactly their audience expect and strive hard to thwart such expectations.
With enough jump-scares for an experience that could be described as a movie in itself or even as an amazing episode of The X-Files, there is plenty of disturbing imagery. This last paragraph could also stand alone as its own story but still works within the context of this anthology.
However, among these four narratives there is one about a cop… This cop –the same one who had investigated deaths these kids are now interested in- and his family provide us with our favorite section. Right after cutting down a Christmas tree on private property something horrifying happens: their very young son starts behaving weirdly-violently-we are drawn into horror…
Nonetheless, while some aspects stray somewhat towards being ridiculous, this account surprisingly remains realistic all through. What makes these supernatural occurrences so much more intense is how domestic terrors form its subtext and characters remain rooted in reality…. Therefore; when things start getting outlandish, it becomes much scarier because everyone knows this their true selves behind closed doors.. It’s really just such a simple story albeit very effective one which again like one written above could’ve justified its own feature length movie.
Conclusion
A Christmas Horror Story comes at just the right time (Halloween or X-mas) as it turns out to be not just another film suffering from pacing issues and problems with tonal shifts, but a nice surprise. It’s both cheesy and truly terrifying in different places, and if you can handle the rapid shifts in style, it is great fun to watch. Finally, an even more fantastic twist ending than we witnessed in the 6th sense.
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