Holiday-themed movies have always been a bit of an iffy area
in horror. Aside from Halloween, which naturally lends itself to horror
stories, the majority of holidays haven’t inspired much greatness in the way of
horror cinema. From Leprechaun, to April Fool’s Day, to Uncle Sam, to Thankskilling – for the most part, holiday horror movies are just
sort of there to laugh at when the appropriate holiday rolls around.
Because Christmas is arguably the biggest holiday of the
year (even for non-Christians, who are nonetheless forced to suffer through the
interminable shopping season), there are a few more options to choose from, but
the pickings are still fairly slim. For decades, horror fans have had to
satiate themselves with viewings of Gremlins
and Black Christmas, year after
year, as nothing better ever seemed to come along. Not that those aren’t
excellent movies; but you’d think that someone would have made at least one equally good Christmas horror film
in the 30+ years since those movies came out.
This is the part where I tell you that Krampus, the latest offering from Trick ‘r Treat director Michael Dougherty – celebrated by horror fans
the world over – is the greatest Christmas horror movie to be seen in decades.
Right? Well… sort of. Not exactly. But kind of.
Let me get there.
I’ll spare you the details of Krampus’s plot, because
if you’re reading this blog I’m guessing you’ve already been following the hype
of this movie for a while now. Trick ‘r
Treat is widely considered an instant classic and genre staple, so it was exciting
to hear that Dougherty had another holiday horror movie in the pipeline. In
many ways, Krampus is every bit the film
I hoped it would be. In other ways, it doesn’t – and perhaps shouldn’t be
expected to – live up to the high bar set by Trick ‘r Treat. After all, that standard exists only in my mind,
and is most likely an unfair one.
Let me start with everything Krampus does right – and that’s a lot. The cast is roundly impressive and likeable (even the redneck relatives
are loveable when it counts), with Krista Stadler being a standout as Omi, the grandmother
who knows the dark history of Krampus. Even the child actors are winning, from main
character Max to mouth-breathing Howie Junior, the kids are all entertaining,
if mostly one-note. As a blizzard sets in and the situation escalates, the
actors do an excellent job of making you care what happens to them.
Unfortunately, the plot undoes that hard work to a certain extent… but I’ll get
back to that in a minute.
Something I trusted Dougherty would bring were the special
(and practical) effects, and bring it he did. Krampus is simply a wonder, from
the way he is revealed – leaping from one suburban rooftop to another in the misty
snow with the force of an earthquake – to the slow pan from his giant hooves to
a chain-laden cloak seen from beneath a car, to the horror of his grisly face,
Krampus is all that one could hope for in a Christmas nightmare. And then
there’s his army of minions: murderous gingerbread cookies that happily bring
to mind Gremlins, a jack-in-the-box truly
from hell, and “elves” that look like they were plucked straight out of a Greek
tragedy. The effects here are on point, to say the least, and are often quite
frightening.
But there were disappointments, as I suppose there were
bound to be, what with the high hopes I’d been harboring. My first quibble is a
small one, but I found the jokes annoyingly hit or miss. An opening montage of Black
Friday shoppers battling it out in slow motion to the tune of “It’s the Most
Wonderful Time of the Year” is perfectly scathing and timely, and a great way
to introduce the main theme of the movie. When the rightwing, redneck relatives
show up at the uptight liberals’ house for Christmas dinner, however, the gags
rest heavily on broad, stale jokes, and more discouraging, jokes that outright
mock the young characters for being fat and ugly. I’m not one to shy away from some
nasty humor, believe me, but many of these supposed witticisms were outdated
and undercooked.
The bigger complaints I had will surely depend on whether
you go to see Krampus because you
love horror, or because you love Christmas. Gore is basically nonexistent in Krampus’ world, despite that the demonic
creature is constantly yanking people away under the snow, accompanied by ghastly
(and seemingly irrevocable) crunching noises. And that’s a real problem; although
Omi sets the stage by giving us the folklore of Krampus, we never find out
exactly where he’s taking the people
he drags off under the snow. Are they being killed? And if so, are they then
taken to Hell, or somewhere else? This lack of parameters, and the quickness of
the characters’ picking off, has the opposite effect of what I think was
intended. Rather than feeling all hope is lost, the audience gets the sense
that there must be some loophole that
will save everyone in the end.
Then there’s the ending. Without spoiling it, let me just
say that the ending can be read in a couple of ways, both of them somewhat
clichéd (though I’m partial to one over the other, and as a horror fan, you’ll
probably be able to guess which one). Multiple fake outs result in an ending
that’s more jumbled than shocking, an ending that just sort of tapers off when it
should’ve ended with a bang – or at least something not so wishy-washy. It
feels like Dougherty was trying to please both the horror crowd and the family
crowd, to poor effect for at least one of those factions. Perhaps he will
please the parent who takes their ten-year-old to see it, and that’s fine. Krampus is probably the kind of movie
that would have terrified and thrilled me as a child. Whether Krampus will end up on rotation year
after year for adult horror watchers, however, remains to be seen. I deeply
enjoyed parts of it, and it’s certainly the best Christmas horror film I’ve seen
in quite a long time, but I’m not sure it has what it takes to endure years of
viewings and be labeled a classic.
“Instant classic” is, of course, a perilously high bar to
set, and the comparisons to Trick ‘r
Treat are made all the more difficult because Halloween is a pagan’s
holiday, tailored-made for the horror genre. It’s meant to trick and treat, whereas Christmas has always solely
delivered treacle-sweet messages of love and morality, making it hard to break
the mold and deliver a sellable movie
to theaters during the holiday season. Dougherty was clearly going for
widespread appeal and a PG-13 rating with Krampus,
two things that were happily absent from his earlier work. But in straddling
that line of pleasing the holiday industrial complex and delivering something
more, I think Krampus leans far to
the side of settling.
The savage bite of Trick
‘r Treat is what is lacking in Krampus; aside from the broad-strokes conservative/liberal jokes
and the fat kid/lesbian jokes – which will, yes, have twelve-year-olds and Tea
Partiers rolling in the aisles – there is very little that is subversive or edgy
about Krampus. At its heart, it is a
movie that by all measures appears to be a throwback to the Christmas movies of
old, from A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, to National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. And those are great movies, but they’re not
horror films. They’re not beholden to anything other than a happy ending. Call
me crazy, but I think horror fans can be some of the most discerning fans, and
I think we demand more than straightforward moralizing. Perhaps Dougherty was trying to give horror fans that
something more at the very end, but I found it to be too little, too late.
…But I’m being harsh. (It’s only because I love Trick ‘r Treat so much, man.) Krampus is a wild, mischievous, very
enjoyable flick. It’s a bright spot in the horror wasteland that typically is
December. I fully recommend that you go see it. But the fact remains – and oh,
how I wish it didn’t! – I wanted more.
Looking back, it’s really been a great year for horror.
Usually when I do these end-of-year roundups, I have way more terrible-to-okay
movies to choose from, and far fewer great ones. Not the case for 2015, wherein I actually had to demote some of my favorites to make room for even better ones. Thank the horror gods, I guess, and I hope 2016 is as good as this year was!
