“Oh man, this holiday movie season is all about the counter programming. First the irreverent The Night Before, and how the horror-comedy(ish) Krampus.
I only had a passing familiarity with the myth of Krampus, the shadow of St. Nicholas. Christoph Waltz went into the story on Jimmy Fallon last year. I was fascinated. Basically, if you’re good, you get presents from Santa. We know that much. But if you’re bad, Krampus comes for you, throws you in his sack, and takes you away. So of course I was beyond excited to hear there was a new film about it coming out.
The movie follows one family (with Toni Collette and Adam Scott as the parents) as they’re snowed in during a blizzard set on by Krampus and his helpers, who then attack. All because they’ve lost the Christmas spirit. It’s billed as a horror comedy, but it was much closer on the horror end of the spectrum. Dark and gothic vibe, bad things happening to people, demonic gingerbread men. Yes, much of the cast generally focus in comedy, but they weren’t after laughs, except maybe out of the sheer absurdity.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was kinda half baked (I think there’s a gingerbread joke in there somewhere). Cool idea, but didn’t really take it anywhere. And a lot of things that looked cool or creepy or unsettling, but didn’t serve a whole lotta purpose except to be cool/creepy/unsettling/etc. Plot was stretched very thin, and filling the time proved to be a challenge. You can only watch people shivering in fear (and cold) for so long.
I would have loved to see them dive into the myth a bit more. Maybe weave in some more backstory, and actually give some weight to our big bad. Alas that wasn’t the case. Guess I’ll just hafta be on the lookout for more from this Christmas creeper since this bite was rather unsatisfying
Krampus – \m/ \m/ \n”