Krampus (2015) Dir: Michael Dougherty

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Every year, I try to watch a few Christmas films, despite not usually being the biggest fan of the genre, and this year, I started my Christmas film viewings with this Michael Dougherty directed seasonal horror comedy. My main motivation for this was because I thought the prospect of a Christmas horror sounded like fun. With that said, reviews are very average for the film, so I decided not to get my hopes up too much, just in case.

I enjoyed the practical effects in the film, particularly as it pertained to some of the monster designs. Those monsters looked much more unique and interesting than those created with CGI. However, both the practical and computer-generated monsters were deeply underutilised, with the film aiming too much for weak jokes and not enough for sinister creature action and horror themes. Krampus may have looked great, but the character was so wasted, in my opinion.

This brings me to my main criticism of the film; the writing. It was pretty terrible, all things considered. The characters were all extremely irritating and shallow, the narrative was lazy and predictable, and the only aspect of the film that I remotely liked from a storyline perspective was its final scene, but that came far too late to make this film feel worthwhile. The film got so annoyingly bogged down in the lacklustre, contrived, and poorly written dysfunctional family saga that none of the horror action truly hit home.

None of the cast impressed me much, even those who I have thought very highly of in other projects. The young Emjay Anthony was evidently trying, but I didn't find his performance particularly convincing, unfortunately. Both Adam Scott and Toni Collette also seemed to want to make this film feel like more than it deserved to be, but they really could only do so much. The likes of Allison Tolman, David Koechner, Stefania LaVie Owen, and Conchata Ferrell, all irritated me, as much as anything else. I just did not enjoy their crude, lazy, and oh-so-childish comedic deliveries at all, especially from Koechner.

Overall, I've checked it twice, and whoever wrote this film is definitely on my naughty list. It was just abysmal. I will give credit where it's due, I liked the practical effects, but they, unfortunately, do not remotely make up for the frustrating mediocrity that was the rest of the film. The lack of quality in this film really does not help my apathy to the Christmas genre - not that I was expecting much more, but even so, this was a let-down.