Review #367: A Christmas Horror Story (2015)


Twelve More Slays of Christmas #9 - A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

Watch it here on Philo!

A Christmas Horror Story is (ironically) not one story, but five stories (some of which are intertwined with one another) centered around Christmas and various folklore. First, William Shatner plays a radio DJ who loves Christmas but is forced to report on an unfortunate killing spree at a local mall. Next, three college students break into a boarding school or something where a brutal murder took place on Christmas the year before to make a documentary on the killings, but find out that some of the horror has lingered. Then a mother, father, and son go out to someone's private property to cut down a Christmas tree- the son goes missing, they find him after a short while, but it soon becomes clear that the child they brought home is not quite the child they lost. Next, a family on Christmas vacation runs into some bad luck after their bratty kid disrespects Krampus, and they learn that the Spirit of Christmas has a dark side. And finally, a story follows Santa Claus himself, getting ready for the big day at the North Pole, when the elves start getting infected with some kind of virus that turns them into feral, fast-moving zombies.

The first thing I should mention is that although I laid those out in that order, that's not the actual order because unlike most anthology films, this one doesn't play them in sequence. Rather than showing all of one story, then all of the next, and so on- as is done in movies like Trick 'r Treat- this one makes the wild choice to intersperse ALL of them throughout the film, so you'll get one scene of one story, then a scene of the next, then maybe two scenes of a third, then back to the second, then the fourth, fifth, second again, fifth, first, and so on. I'm really not crazy about this decision- it made it very difficult to connect with any individual story because oftentimes I wouldn't even have gotten the hook of the story before it's already cutting to two other stories- and I have a sneaking suspicion they originally made these to play fully in sequence but then they realized the pacing was really, really bad, so someone in the editing room had the bright idea to intercut them all so they had a little better control over the pacing. It doesn't necessarily ruin the film, but I can say with absolute certainty that my favorite part was once the stories started reaching their conclusions, because then I knew next time I saw the Santa story, or the School Documentary story, or whatever, I would definitely be seeing the rest of the story before it cut away.

Now, another thing I need to say: there are times when a twist ruins a film. However, there are other times when a twist elevates an otherwise mediocre film and makes you look back at the whole thing in a more positive light. This movie has one of those- it's in one of the stories that makes you realize how it ties into some of the others- and this twist singlehandedly caused me to bump up my rating by two whole points. (I was going to rate this a 4 or 5, since several of the stories really didn't seem necessary or worthwhile, but this twist honestly came as such a welcome surprise- and it made such an impact on the overall quality of the film- that I think I'm going to rate it a 7 instead.) I won't go into any details of course, because I actually think this film is worth watching for the twist alone. So while I don't think I'll ever be interested in watching this movie a second time, it's definitely something I would recommend everybody watch once.

Also: y'all remember when everybody was obsessed with Krampus a few years back? Seriously. That was wild.

Overall Rating: 7/10 Road Flares in the Snow

Crazy Credits: During the closing credits it is stated that "No elves were harmed in the making of this film."

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