Okay, just ONE christmas themed slasher to review under the tenenbaum.
It is Christmas’ Eve, after all.
Also, not one of the more obvious one, yet not an oldie, so that brings us to 2022’s Christmas Bloody Christmas, which is an apt if generic title, unrelated to the Silent Night, Deadly Night series (even though it started as a remake of that one, which did get a remake-reboot released earlier this month) or Black Christmas, the 2020 reboot which i was denied seeing by local distributors saying it was coming to theathers here too…. it never did in any widespread way.
We’ll do that next year, i’m really not feeling it this time around, nor dumpster diving for another shitty Krampus film that might or not be about the Krampus.
No thanks, i’ll stick to something more recent and normal, like this film about a defective robot santa malfunctioning on Christmas’ Eve and starting a killing spree.
As one of the fake TV commercials tells us in the opening, a company specialized in militarized robot soldiers made a Santa robot for civilian use, but they are now being recalled from sale, and one just happens to be in the toy store of a small snowy little american town, and after taking a whiff of people talking about sex and being raunchy, the santa robot awakens its inner “Puritan protocols”, as in, its a slasher film, so obviously the killer goes after people having premarital sex.
This includes the young couple working at the toyshop (that obviously wanna fuck in there afterhours, it’s not like they’re open anyway on Christmas Eve), friends of a young woman running a local music & video shop, and one of her employees-friends, whom obviously have a thing going on, being such loudmothed hard rock, metal and vintage horror movie nerds.
I mean, it doesn’t say this is taking place in the 80s, but it’s also such an obvious retrostyled modern horror film that isn’t afraid to tell its audience it loves the classics and isn’t a poser, which i kinda believe because they wouldn’t put poster for obscure flick like frigging Spookies, have a synthwave soundtrack and a stylized vaguely exploitation-ish look with neon saturations and so on.
But more than looking the part and stylizing itself in a retro 80s fashion, this actually understand the strenghts of those, for example replicating/updating the kind of raunchy, foul mouthed yet somewhat endearing characters you could find in 80s slasher and horror films in general, and that leveraging the simplicity is the key to being effective. Though its also shows its hand, so to speak, with the referential dialogue and implicit awareness of the genre cliches are telling this is a modern take on the genre, that knows how these movies work, like the “last girl” not taking the fakeout deaths seriously and ready to shot the fucker at blank range just to make sure its actually dead.
That said, in this case these don’t become issues at all, they do know what people expect from these retro styled modern slasher, what people did love about these, and so the pastiche isn’t souless nor ineffective, quite the opposite: it’s sleek, stylish, brutal, doesn’t waste time with bullshit that exists sorely to pad out the runtime, and – keeping with the retro 80s style – it goes for what look like purely practical special effects, which are pretty good, especially the ones for the robot santa when it “santa skin” is peeled off by endless abuse.
It’s basically Silent Night Bloody Night crossed with The Terminator and Chopping Mall, but it’s quite fun, plays decently with genre clichè expectations, but also doesn’t pretend to be more than a nifty, original variation on the psycho Santa killer on the loose, which is refreshingly honest, silly at heart, doesn’t hold back in terms of gore or intensity, plus it doesn’t overstay its welcome at all and the characters are surprisingly charming dorks.
It’s also one of those case where the movie manages to make you go along with the absurd premise, you’re never stopping to ask or wonder why the military would repackage killer soldier bots for domestic use… heck, not even that, basically toy stores decoration paraphernalia , it just wears the silly concept on its face so well and doesn’t bother to make the concept “realistic” or some crap like that, it just commits to it 100 %.
I could have used a bit more gore, personally, but it’s fairly good, it do see why this could become a Christmas horror classic in the future, and in the end i do recommend it.
Merry Christmas, fo’ real !
Wise Cafe (International) 