The Krampus – Film Review by C.K. MacNamara

Director: Michael Dougherty

Writers: Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields

Starring: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell

Landing in the midst of the holiday season like a flaccid cardboard cut-out of the word ‘Boo’, The Krampus attempts a Christmas themed horror story by being, at its core, the edgy re-imagining of Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer. Are you spooked yet?

Centring on that oldest of cringe inducing premises; the dysfunctional family Christmas, child-protagonist (ugh) Max is plagued by his visiting relatives, who not only don’t believe in Santa but steal the letters of those who do! The Scandal! The intrigue!

Renouncing his Christmas cheer he hurls his torn letter to the winds and presumably adopts Ramadan as his preferred holiday. But rather than continue its formulaic re-treading of the ‘boy who relearns the meaning of Christmas’ story the narrative veers into the bizarre as Santa, like an Old Testament deity, unleashes his slack jawed cousin to exact petty vengeance on the non-believers.

Whether or not the satire of this script is intentional genius or a misstep into the sublime is entirely debatable; the characters are the predictably Disney blend of uppity New Yorkers plagued by their visiting Southern rootin-tootin relatives, yet there is also a German grandmother hiding in the wings, ready to fade in and out of existence at the plot’s convenience; here explaining the origins of the Krampus mythology, there sharpening her collection of butcher knives. Exactly whose mother the Bavarian wonder is remains unknown; but narrative consistency be damned we’re trying to save Christmas here!

Despite the ambiguous moral of ‘Believe in Christmas, or else!’ the actual monsters are surprisingly well-imagined, boasting a porcelain clown face and squirming BDSM imagery to deliver a genuinely unsettling spectacle; that is when they are not obscured by waves of CGI gingerbread men exported from Shrek.

In the Yuletide spirit of cheap gaudiness, The Krampus wobbles into view as a taped together bauble; something to dangle from the big screen in the hopes of scraping a few holiday bucks from the slack jawed and the morbidly curious. Are you spooked yet?