Review of A Christmas Horror Story (2015) by Michael M — 18 Dec 2017

I've never been crazy about the idea of Christmas horror films. Halloween sure, but for Christmas it seems contradictory to the point. I'm also very skeptical of anthology films, especially horror, as they're usually so drastic in their hits and misses. So A Christmas Horror Story had a lot to live up to. It does make some strong hits, but while it never completely misses it doesn't always seem to be aiming for major hits.

The four stories involve a changeling, a virgin birth and bloody ghost, the Krampus, and Santa fighting zombie elves. All the stories are, for the most part, pretty good. My main problem is that only those last two really have a distinctly Christmas theme. Sure virgin birth fits with the whole immaculate conception thing, but that aspect of that story is surprisingly downplayed in favor of a standard haunting. The changeling story really has nothing to do with Christmas, other than the fact that it is happening on Christmas. That's the problem with Christmas horror, unlike Halloween, there isn't a lot of horror mythology to pull from outside of horrific capitalism and Krampus, so you're left taking standard horror tropes and throwing some snow on them. The thing is that those stories are perfectly fine, and have some standout moments, but there's nothing about them that feels like it needed to be Christmas. The Krampus story is pretty good, but not great. It's sort of a standard "run from the monster" scenario we've seen thousands of times before except this time the monster is Krampus. There is a good twist at the end regarding the spirit of Christmas that gave me a smile, but overall it's nothing special, but still fun. The Santa story is far and away the highlight, and the main reason to watch this movie. If anyone ever made a fancut of just the Santa part of this movie, I would watch it every Christmas. It's great because while it has Santa facing off against horrific things, he still retains his Santa-ness. He's forced to kill his elves when they turn into zombies, but he feels really bad about it, and in a strange way that's actually really charming. My only real issue is with the ending. Again, there's a twist, and while it's a pretty good twist and fits into the real life horrors of Christmas, it took away a lot of the fun that the segment had. That's probably just a personal thing, but I could have done without that.

A Christmas Horror Story is a pretty good horror anthology, but only holds glimpses of being something great. Most of the stories are standard horror fare, none are that scary, and only one is really fun. For horror fans who want something a little different for Christmas, I do still reccomend it, if for no other reason than to check on the Santa segment which is a blast. If you want something on par with V/H/S/ or Trick 'r Treat though, it's not here.