BEFORE: This is a film that I've just had ZERO luck linking to, for at least the last two years. The problem always seems that it doesn't really fit in at Halloween time because it's a Christmas movie, and then at Christmas time it doesn't really fit in because it's a horror movie. So I end up passing on it twice a year - plus it's been VERY hard to link to it, since it doesn't have a lot of stars in it, just two or three, and then a bunch of people who don't have many credits. BUT, with the recent last-minute reshuffling I did in early October, and a sudden notion to separate out "Velvet Buzzsaw" from the other John Malkovich films, that created something of an opportunity, with Toni Collette carrying over from "Velvet Buzzsaw".
I remembered that Collette was also in THIS film, so it was a happy surprise that I could finally find a slot for this film, this year, NOW, god damn it. Let's clear off some of the movies that have been on my watch list the longest, and make some room for new ones! And as you'll see tomorrow, this SO CONVENIENTLY connects back to my planned horror chain, that I'm practically kicking myself for not realizing sooner to make this film part of this year's chain, right now, no more delays. So what if it's also a Christmas film - after Halloween, it's time to start getting ready for Christmas! OK, first I have to go to Vegas for a week, then I have to hand out candy on Oct. 31, then there's the whole Thanksgiving thing, but after that, CHRISTMAS!
This year is getting so close to being over - I know I'm going to be on break for most of November and December, but my real Christmas movie is just 15 films away - that's, like, just over two weeks of movies! And the chain is still solid, that's 285 connected films this year, with just 15 to go!
THE PLOT: A boy who has a bad Christmas ends up accidentally summoning a festive demon to his family home.
AFTER: I kind of forgot, right up until I saw the first on-screen credit, that this film was directed by Michael Dougherty, who I used to work with, and also the director of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" and "Trick 'R Treat" before that. So I'm getting to TWO of his movies in the course of one week, that's something... (If I had realized that those two films share an actor, I could have linked between them, that could have made my life easier - nope, I'll all for doing things the hard way, it seems...)
The film opens with a montage of Christmas shoppers tearing apart a department store, and a bunch of holiday workers barely paying attention, parents trying to get their kids to smile for holiday photos, etc. Depending on who you are and how you feel about the Christmas season coming up soon, this could be the scariest part of the whole film...
If you're not familiar with Krampus, it's apparently an old German folk tale about a Christmas beast that comes around - like the opposite of Santa Claus, who visits your house and eats cookies but leaves you presents. Krampus will come around if children have been bad, to punish them - oh, he'll eat your cookies, but possibly also your children, and he'll leave behind no gifts, just pain and misery. I guess if your kids won't behave when you dangle the promise of toys from Santa, it's good to have a back-up for the holdouts. Think of it as a one-two punch to get kids to toe the line. I was raised by a German grandmother and she never mentioned the Krampus story, so maybe I was pretty well-behaved - but she did tell us the story of Struwwelpeter, and that was pretty horrific, it's along the same lines.
(Years later, I also found out about Zwarte Piet, which is a character in Holland - like Santa Claus, but in blackface (yep) and he arrives by boat on December 5, from his summer home in Spain, to march in the Sinterklass (St. Nicholas) parade and throw cookies (hard) at good children and also thrash the naughty ones. In some accounts, he's a former slave that was freed by Santa and became his lifelong servant/companion, others say he was an Italian chimney sweep and has a permanent layer of soot on his body, hence the black make-up. Either way, it all seems VERY racist...look it up if you don't believe me...but let's get back to Krampus)
Leave it to the Germans to turn Christmas into a scary occasion - the kid in this movie has a German grandmother (been there, done that...) and I found it interesting that she speaks mostly German, which he understands, and he talks to her in English, which she apparently understands. (This reminded me a bit of the Han Solo/Chewbacca relationship, where neither character feels the need to speak the other's language, yet they communicate perfectly.) Something apparently happened to Grandma back in the old country, seems like Krampus took out her whole family, but left her alive to tell the tale. And now, for some reason, possibly Max's rejection of Santa Claus, Krampus is back with a band of dark elves to finish the job...
The first half-hour of the film is set-up, of course - and with a couple of Republicans/rural folk/gun nuts coming over to visit the more suburban/Democratic/peacenik side of the family (I'm assuming the two wives are sisters, but other answers are possible) you might think this is going to be a typical culture-clash kind of movie, maybe a comedy like "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" or worse, an insipid holiday drama. Nay nay, any stereotypes, political views espoused in the first act are just there to induce holiday-related stress in the audience, so that we'll HATE some or all of the characters, then we might not mind so much when they start to get killed. "Velvet Buzzsaw" used almost the exact same technique last night, with all those pretentious a-holes in the L.A. art industry acting all self-entitled, so we just can't WAIT to take some odd delight in their demises.
There's really a lot going on here - Krampus is definitely out in the neighborhood, leaping from one rooftop to the other, though it's unclear if he's torturing families in every house on the block, of if most of the neighbors are away for the holidays. But when the blizzard hits, the family we hate/care about the most is snowed in for the duration, and they're sitting ducks. Inside their own house, they're attacked by gingerbread men with a nail-gun, a demonic angel ornament, a twisted jack-in-the-box, an evil robot and a fierce teddy bear in the attic. It's also a bit unclear whether these creatures are elves in disguise, or if they're all aspects of Krampus in different forms - in fact some reminded me of the way that Pennywise can appear in so many different forms in "It".
There's also something weird about the architecture in the house - like when Krampus is on the roof, and they can all hear it and feel it when they're in the living room. But later on, they go to the attic - wouldn't the attic be somewhere between the living room and the roof? Or were they hearing the creatures in the attic, and not the ones on the roof? Either way, it was pretty confusing, even if you allow for demonic forces somehow changing the house's dimensions when they crawl through the ductwork.
Meanwhile, what's the objective of Krampus? If you're not in the holiday spirit, keeping the spirit of Christmas in your heart, he'll come to your house and kill your loved ones? Oh, sure, I bet you'll learn your lesson then, you're going to LOVE Christmas once you remember it's the day that a giant horned creature ate your family. Can't we just go back to Santa Claus? Admittedly, I think the kid shown here seems a bit old to still believe in Santa Claus - I think today's kids, with their internets and their post-millennial skepticism, should be able to figure out the Santa thing by age 8, at the very least. I'd like to think that if I had a kid, he or she wouldn't go for the ruse in the first place - I would have trained them to see right through the B.S. of that little fairy-tale.
Also starring Emjay Anthony (last seen in "Chef"), Adam Scott (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), David Koechner (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Allison Tolman (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Krista Stadler, Conchata Ferrell (last seen in "Mystic Pizza"), Stefania LaVie Owen (last seen in "The Lovely Bones"), Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, Maverick Flack, Mark Atkin, Sage Hunefeld, Leith Towers, Curtis Vowell, Luke Hawker, Brett Beattie, and the voices of Gideon Emery (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Seth Green (last heard in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Breehn Burns, Justin Roiland (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Ivy George (last seen in "13 Hours")
RATING: 5 out of 10 Yule goats
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