"Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold. I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.
2013, d. Michael Dougherty - DVD
I didn't really have any German or Bavarian friends growing up so the "tradition" of Krampus, or even the concept of an "anti-Santa", never crossed my ears.
I've only known of Krampus as a mythical figure for maybe half my life, mainly as a result of consuming pop culture. It may have been an episode of The Venture Brothers, "A Very Venture Christmas", that introduced me to the concept, or possibly it was a word-of-mouth thing through nerd circles a few years earlier.
It does seem that since the debut of this 2015 holiday horror movie that the concept of Krampus in North America has really, really taken off. Where in Alpine Europe there are Krapus runs (I presume like the "running of the bulls" in Spain, but instead a bunch of people in Krampus costumes chase the normies with swatting sticks, but only guessing), in North America Krampus has largely been adopted by metal heads, goths, and anti-Christmas people who don't identify with the redemptive arcs of Grinches and Scrooges.
That the prominence of Krampus in Canada and the US can be attributed to the film is not reflective of the quality of the film, or even that it was that successful in theatres (it did fine). It simply just took something that lurked in the background of pop culture, stuck a Hollywood advertising budget behind it and brought Krampus to the forefront.
It's a fine film, although not quite what I was expecting. I knew that it was sort of a horror comedy, but I don't think I realized that it was PG-13 rated, making it more of a Gremlins thing than, say, Black Christmas.
Its first act opens like National Lampoon' s Christmas Vacation with the natty Engel family begrudgingly welcoming the belligerent right wing side of their family into their home three days before Christmas (that's way too early for guests to be arriving!). Their differences are made known immediately and frequently. Despite the constant contention between the families, the colour palette of this first act is vibrant and warm, bathed in an amber hue, and the score is gentle and light. But we know what we're in for.
The next morning, the families awake to no power in the house and total whiteout conditions outside. While having plenty of candles and a warm fire, the first question is can they survive each other long enough to even encounter what we all (think we) know is coming. There are strange snowmen built outside. That's not good. The colour palette has changed to icy whites and blues, the chill is immediate, and the score, becomes more foreboding than festive.
Engel daughter Beth, not getting any cellular reception, decides to trudge out to her boyfriend's place a few blocks away. She doesn't make it, and it takes the family a few hours before they start to really worry. Engel dad Tom and his antagonistic, gun-toting, MAGA-primed brorther-in-law, Howard, set out in Howard's gas guzzling tank of a truck to find her, but soon discover there are nefarious things afoot, both above and beneath the snow. After Howard is attacked but saved by Tom, and his truck is destroyed, the pair return home, Beth-less, where things only begin to accelerate.
A Trojan horse in the form of a sack of presents unleashes demonic Christmassy things upon the household: precocious, Gremlin-esque (in behaviour, not looks) gingerbread men, demonic dolls and teddy bears, and a legit horrifying people-consuming, snake-like, clown-faced jack-in-the-box (the plinking as it slithers was the perfect touch). Family members get taken as they hatch a futile plan to escape into the snow, not even realizing that the absurd horrors they've just encountered are a precursor to the arrival of the Krampus.
Tom's mother relays the story of her encounter with the Krampus as a child (told wonderfully in Henry Selick-esque stop-motion animation), and to be frank, I don't quite get the mythos they're building here. They're basically saying that any time a child actively renounces Christmas, as both Tom's mother once did, and Tom's son Max did the day before), Krampus arrives with his array of festive demons to punish the child by stealing their family and leaving them nothing but a bell.
SPOILERS for this 8-year-old film.
The entire family is taken by Krampus, and when Max tries to take back his rejection of Christmas, Krampus does not give him back his family, but also takes him. Krampus summons a blazing pit that opens up, and the entire family is thrust into it.
Max awakens, thinking it was all a dream, but instead finds that he's in purgatory, set to perpetually live this Christmas with his family, as they are trapped inside a snow globe, part of Krampus' collection, a fate teased in the poster of the film.
I liked a lot of this movie, particularly in its bleak outcome. I kept expecting a happy ending or a last-minute intervention from Saint Nicholas but none of it happens. The kids that are taken are taken, and any of the family members reconciling is for naught.
At once it feels like a COVID film, despite being made 5 years before the pandemic. It's a very closed-in, tightly contained production, but they do a pretty epic job of presenting the total whiteout conditions outside, even if all the snow looks fake as hell (soap flakes I presume). But when you watch as many cheaply decorated Hallmarkies as we do, an ambitious effort of a winter hellscape like this is appreciated.
I was disappointed at the lack of Krampus in this film titled Krampus. He's not in the film much, and most of the terrorizing is done by minions of differing threat levels. I think the only truly scary one was the jack-in-the-box. I liked the exterior scenes of things moving under the snow, which was a mix of Bugs Bunny with Tremors. An entire film of Snow Tremors, winter graboids, would be tremendous fun.
I loved the aesthetic of chimneys with fissures in them from Krampus' forced entry and in general the film looks pretty good. I was a bit taken aback by Krampus' face being not a pointy-featured demon, but instead like a melty-faced Santa Clause with gigantic horns. It's not appealing at all. It's not intended to be, but it *should* be if they really wanted to merchandise this thing. Like if you want to make your Krampus iconic, you have to make him something that people will react to by muttering "oh that's cool" under their breath, not recoiling and looking away.
The cast is fun. Adam Scott, David Koechner, Toni Collette, Allison Tolman, and Conchata Ferrell are all elevating what could otherwise have been a direct-to-video movie into a destination picture. So too does the Weta Workshop created creatures and, in general some real care and attention put into the production.
I just wish the myth-building of this film's Krampus was more concrete.
BUT IS IT HORROR?
Yes, it is. It's horror-lite, but it is horror.
[we agree. Toasty's take]
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