Christmas Bloody Christmas Review: A Robotic Santa Goes Haywire In This Uber-Stylish Holiday Slasher
Christmas has become a ripe season for horror. The holiday horror subgenre is alive and kicking, and it feels like every year we get at least a handful of Christmas-set creepers, usually involving some sort of killer Santa Claus. It's nothing new — Santa has been slashing for years, in one form or another. When TriStar Pictures released "Silent Night, Deadly Night" in 1984, complete with a poster featuring Santa's arm clutching an axe as he descends down a chimney, there was an uproar. The uproar was so loud that TriStar pulled the pic from theaters after a week — which wasn't such a big deal, as "Silent Night, Deadly Night" had already made back its meager budget, and then some, at that point.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" wasn't the first film to feature some sort of evil Santa — 1978's thriller "The Silent Partner" has Christopher Plummer as a sadistic thief who dresses like Old Saint Nick — but you could argue that it, along with Bob Clark's phenomenal 1974 chiller "Black Christmas," helped spawn the Christmas horror subgenre as we know it today. The latest entry in that ever-growing group of films is "Christmas Bloody Christmas," helmed by indie horror fave Joe Begos, a director who seems to specialize in movies about very aggressive, very loud people who scream at each other even before the killing starts.
I confess I am not the biggest fan of Begos' work, which includes the "Scanners" homage "The Mind's Eye" and the vampire flick "Bliss" — I have trouble getting on board with his overly shouty characters. But Begos has outdone himself with "Christmas Bloody Christmas," which still has the scream-heavy locals but balances things out with a great, plucky heroine and a style so sharp that it borders on breathtaking. This is a damn good-looking movie, and the fact that it cost a fraction of bigger films that look a hell of a lot worse is more than impressive. Every frame swirls with fog, or snow, or haze, all of it lit by an abundance of multicolored Christmas lights. It's at once beautiful and ominous, and I found myself getting lost in the splendor of one frame after another.
And oh yeah, I should add that there's a murderous robotic Santa Claus roaming around.
A gruesome holly jolly good time
It's Christmas Eve in a town so small that it looks practically abandoned. There are signs of life in the abundant Christmas lights that stretch from one end of town to another, adorning shops and homes with cold, bright reds, blues, and greens. But the town itself is quiet, at least for the most part. At a local record store, Tori (Riley Dandy) is ready to knock off and get loaded. Her coworker Robbie (Sam Delich), who clearly has a crush on her, wants to tag along, and the two banter and trash-talk in a fun, flirty way that makes us almost instantly like them. Dandy is particularly good at running with off-the-cuff dialogue, much of which feels spontaneous and improvised.
The town may be small but that hasn't stopped the local toy store from setting up a life-sized, and surely very expensive robotic Santa Claus. We learn that the robot is actually repurposed military tech — a literal robot soldier that has been dressed up in Kris Kringle garb. You can probably guess where this is going: the robo-Santa will revert to its old programming and start obliterating everyone in its path. And sure enough, that's exactly what happens. Santa comes to life, grabs an axe, and starts splitting heads like cords of wood.
From there, Begos is off and running, creating one gruesome, chaotic set piece after another. Santa stalks through town after Tori and Robbie, and anyone else who happens to pop up is swiftly dispatched with plenty of Christmas brutality. Gorehounds will howl as blood sprays, fountain-like, from head split in twain. It's a gruesome holly jolly good time.
Style and gore
"Christmas Bloody Christmas" wouldn't work nearly as well as it does were it not for Dandy's lead performance. She makes Tori tough and relatable, and it's easy for us to root for her against the killer Claus. When the film begins to grow a bit repetitive — and yes, shouty — Dandy keeps it centered. The real star, though, is Brian Sowell's cinematography. It's easy to throw a bunch of Christmas iconography on the screen and hope for the best, but "Christmas Bloody Christmas" embraces the Christmas of it all by acknowledging that, yes, Christmas lights look cool as hell in movies. There's something near-magical about the strands of multicolored lights that occupy nearly every frame of the film, offering a winter wonderland contrast to all the carnage.
Style alone cannot make a movie, and "Christmas Bloody Christmas" suffers from a rather repetitive nature — Tori goes somewhere, Santa shows up, people die, repeat. I also found the robot Santa rather lacking. No offense to actor Abraham Benrubi, who is suitably hulking and threatening in the role. It's just that Santa never really feels like a robot come to life — he just comes across as a big guy in a Santa costume. I would've loved a more robotic feel here since that's kind of the entire premise — killer robot Santa!
I suspect that won't matter much to the film's target audience, who likely want to just watch Santa murder people against a wonderfully, deliberately trashy, sleazy, stylish backdrop. On that front, "Christmas Bloody Christmas" delivers, and then some. I can easily see this becoming the type of Christmas horror film that fans revisit every holiday season. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, dear reader, and watch out for Santa.
/Film Rating: 7 out of 10