Krampus

10 December 2015 - Bolton - 16:10

My wife asked me recently what films I would like to watch this Christmas on the run up to the festive day?  Thinking of the obvious ones like Muppets Christmas Carol, Elf, Home Alone, It's a Wonderful life etc, I discounted them and thought of the more traditional.  Die Hard 1 & 2 and Gremlins.

Gremlins is a fantastic Christmas film and one worth a watch every year.  It combines comedy, horror and festive times all into one nostalgic classic.  So imagine my surprise to see a new horror festive comedy hitting the screens this Christmas, Krampus.

When a young boy loses his belief a few days before Christmas due to family issues and the in-laws from Hell, a frozen desert descends upon his sleepy town isolating the feuding family from the rest of society.  What they originally think as a freak storm turns out to be an increasing nightmare of Anti-Christmas, CG filled torment.

What it fails to do primarily is give you character to like so the terror they are facing is "terrible".  I cannot say I actually cared about any of the family, possibly Omi, but she had a dark past that made her unbearable too.

The creatures that bring forth Krampus, doing his dirty work before he arrives, are laughably rubbish.  The Gingerbread trio look like something out of a Warner Brother Cartoon and should be battling Wile Coyote rather than in a mainstream film.  

That aside, there are some practical effects in the film as well, mainly the Krampus character, when not leaping from roof to roof.  However, this just makes it stand out more against the cartoon-esque harbingers.

I think I will be sticking to the Joe Dante Christmas this year for my Crimbo Horror Comedy film