I didn’t go into this movie seriously. It’s called “A Christmas Horror Story” which both reeks of being a temp title and sounds like a joke pitch title (a la “Dude, Where’s My Car” or “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”). The cover art is Santa about to battle a Krampus. I watched this movie on a lark, hoping for a couple laughs and maybe one intriguing horror idea.
Perhaps it was a result of my lowered expectations, but I really enjoyed this movie. It all comes down to the consistency of tone. That’s my problem with most horror anthologies. One filmmaker takes the assignment seriously. The next treats it as a joke. The whole anthology feels incongruent and I wonder why they bothered to put them into the same movie in the first place. The best horror anthologies share similar marching orders. Either there’s a producer wrangling the assorted directors’ visions or it’s the same filmmakers working on each segment. A Christmas Horror Story is a very consistent movie. It’s a hair ridiculous. It opts for comic violence. The stories are all serious in how they are acted. The comedy is only in how absurd the stories are when you describe them. William Shatner as a radio DJ gives the movie just enough of a spine to hold together. And I like the decision to mix all the stories together rather than tell them individually. They all hit similar enough beats that it didn’t feel like I was leaving one story that’s getting good for another story that was still laying the groundwork.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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