A Christmas Horror Story

While you might see William Shatner headlining the film, this unusually orchestrated omnibus (instead of each story separated one at a time with the narrator sort of navigating, they all play out in parts, woven and knit within the framework of a Christmas Eve in Bailey Downs) actually only uses him sparingly. It looks like a nice paycheck and easy part as he never leaves his chair in the comfy, festive confines of his radio station booth while havoc is wreaked at a nearby mall, reporting what news comes in while boozing it up, pulling a double shift. Shatner’s presence is still welcome, even if he isn’t tasked with much duty. He offers some anecdotal comments on Christmas, ponders why the season has its share of blood and violence when the season should bring right the opposite. Come to think of it, A Christmas Horror Story (2015) might just work as a companion to Silent Night (2012), a very cynical, often quite volatile slasher that reminds us that the season has a real dark side to it.

 Credit to George Buza in a full bore Santa role, defending the North Pole against zombie elves (and eventually zombie Martha!), as Krampus arrives to combat him in a battle of Christmas…or so we are led to believe, with a twist is a knockout and led to my rating going up .05.

The Changeling tale, where parents (one a cop who is haunted by an investigation that turned up two dead teenagers in a school with an attachment old, rundown convent, closed to the public) take their asthmatic son to a woods on the outskirts of town to cut a tree behind a chained fence for Christmas, gets quite icky at times…what returns with the parents isn’t their child as the landowner tries to warn the mother who fails to listen until her husband is butchered.

 The Krampus tale is probably my least favorite. It was hurt by the Krampus film that featured a fantastic cast such as Toni Collette that same year. A family goes off to visit an estranged aunt, with their dark secrets resulting in being pursued by the Anti-Santa. The daughter is a kleptomaniac, the husband a Ponsi Schemer, the wife seemingly still in the marriage because of the money afforded to buy her nice things, and the son a blossoming psychopath who has killed the family pets (he knocks over a figurine of Krampus, earning the ire of Julian Richings). Returning home after the aunt kicks them out (the father was trying to free some cash from her in order to buy himself some time; he later tells his wife that they are about to lose everything and he’s bound for jail!), Krampus hunts them down one by one, as they try to apologize and forgive each other for their sins. The daughter, who gave keys to the school where her boyfriend, and their two friends from school (working on a school project that focuses on a news program about the two murders that happened in the abandoned convent), plan to intrude for a brief time, ends up squaring off with Krampus alone, finding her inner final girl.

Her friends get locked in the convent branch of the school and run afoul of the vengeful spirit of a young nun who was pregnant, dying from a disastrous abortion. That nun occupies the body of Zoé De Grand Maison and she seduces Alex Ozerov in what I thought was an erotic scene.

The Changeling has a creepy moment where the thing pretending to be the son cops an eyeful of mommy in the shower and later tries to cop a feel while she sleeps under the covers. His crawling on the ceiling while daddy is focused on his mistakes (he loses it when the kid won’t listen to reason or obey them) is a cool visual. I did get a kick out of the absurd Santa tale where see Ole Saint Nick chopping off zombie elf heads and smashing them under foot while they charge at him with foul intentions and potty mouths. But the twist out of that and how he is tied to Shatner early on in the film really were the prize developments that moved the needle with me, for sure. I loved seeing Shatner in this but you get a lot more from him and Christmas watching Boston Legal with James Spader. The film really does try to knit all of the ongoing stories together in clever ways. Characters, despite their own individual perils, are loosely connected to each other. So that has to be recognized. I do wish I had liked it more, but there was this underwhelming feeling I had. I think maybe because Shatner isn’t all that involved…I think I was hoping his role was a bit more substantial. 2.5/5