Krampus (2015)

Krampus (2015)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Cast: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Emjay Anthony

To make a Christmas Horror film is a tricky thing, especially if you’re criticizing Christmas as a holiday, which is what most Christmas Horror films do. They either expose the lies behind the whole Santa Claus thing, or just talk about how the holidays can drive you nuts. History has shown that these types of films do not make it big at the box office because they attack the cash cow of consumerism: Santa Claus. Films like for example Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) died quick deaths at the box office because angry parents were furious at the idea of a killer Santa Claus, because you know, Jolly Saint Nick is supposed to represent goodness and happiness and we can’t have anything tinge that image that Santa Claus. But these movies keep getting made in spite of their sketchy track record at the box office. Take for example the super fun, ultra gory Santa’s Slay (2005). It also died a quick death at the box office and went immediately to dvd, but man, what a fun movie it is. It’s just that in it, Santa is a demon who kills a bunch of people with Christmas ornaments.  These movies aren’t “bad movies” perse, well some of the are, but most of them are actually good horror films; the reason they fail to make money is because they are shunned, put aside like an unwanted child. But whatever, usually I like these movies because they analyze the true nature of Christmas and its consumerist roots. I mean, come on, you all know Santa Claus as we know it was in large part created by the folks at Coca Cola right?  

Krampus is all about the Engel family; they are having a Christmas get together type of deal. You know, the kind where you have family members come over and visit you and everybody is jolly and merry together, drinking egg nog and reading Christmas stories. The only problem with the Engel family is that everybody hates each other. This family exudes so much hatred, that Max, the little kid in the family ends telling everyone that he hates Christmas and that he hates all of them. At this moment a demon known as Krampus shows up and starts killing family members because they didn’t celebrate Christmas properly, because the family hated each other instead of loving each other. The family must try and survive the night while creepy demonic creatures stalk them. Can the Krampus curse be broken? Is there a chance to survive this nightmarish night?

The director of this film, Michael Dougherty, is similar in many ways to Tim Burton in the sense that they are both obsessed with the holidays. Dougherty’s first student film was an animated short film entitled Season’s Greetings (1996), which was the basis for his first full length feature film Trick R’ Treat (2007), an anthology film where four different stories take place during Halloween night. Both Seasons Greetings (1996) and Trick R’ Treat (2007) are very atmospheric, creepy Halloween films that truly embrace the holiday, which is the same thing Dougherty does with Krampus (2015). On this film, Dougherty captures what Christmas is like for all of us. Dougherty paints a very contemporary take on the holiday by brilliantly starting out the film during Black Friday, with people punching each other over a television set. To the best of my understanding, no film has depicted Black Friday yet, so I thought it was genius that Dougherty captured the craziness of that day in which greed flourishes and I feel ashamed of humanity. On that day, people become monsters, consumerist zombies responding to the programming they’ve received through television. So yeah, I was glad that the film starts out this way, showing the ugliest side of Christmas, holding a mirror up to society.

Krampus also focuses on the spooky side of Christmas, which explains why during the first few frames of the film we see a television set showing Alastair Sim in Scrooge (1951), a Christmas ghost story. In this way, the filmmaker’s foreshadow the events ahead, they let us know from early on that Christmas mythology has its spooky side. What Dougherty did with Krampus is sort of the same thing he did in Trick R’ Treat (2007). If you remember correctly, in Trick R’ Treat there’s this story about an old Scrooge like character that hates Halloween and everything about it, so in comes this little monster that’s going to make him pay for not celebrating Halloween properly. Dougherty simply applied that formula to Christmas, which why Krampus is a demon that comes to kill you if you don’t celebrate Christmas properly. So in a way, Krampus is a film that while criticizing Christmas, it also promotes the celebration of Christmas. It’s  a film that says celebrate, be merry and love each other, or else!

I liked the premise of a family locked inside their house because of a raging blizzard because it amps up the creepy vibe. Suddenly the snowmen look evil, the trees are dead, the wind is howling…Dougherty expertly turns Christmas images into horrifying images. I loved the concept of Krampus, this giant demon with hooves, who looks like a zombified Santa Clause that has these evil ginger bread men, demonic teddy bears and clowns to help him carry out the curse. He also has an evil jack in the box to help him. At one point it was beginning to feel like Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys (2004), but with a budget? Actually, it reminded me most of Gremlins (1984) in the sense that it was mixing horror, comedy and Christmas all in the same film. Yet even Gremlins (1984) was more graphic in nature than this one. I only had two problems with Krampus, number one is that at some point it felt a little repetitive, with the demonic toys jumping on people and looking all scary but not really doing anything save for looking and sounding scary, and the other problem is that it felt very light for a horror film. I mean you got demonic Christmas toys attacking a family, why don’t you go all the way instead of shying away from the blood? The film tries to be scary, but not too scary so the kids won’t run out of the theater in terror. I can’t blame the filmmakers for catering to their target audience; these guys knew exactly the type of horror film they were making. For gorier Christmas horror go and watch Black Christmas (2006) or Christmas Evil (1980). Or if you want to watch a similar film to Krampus that is far scarier, I recommend you watch Rare Exports (2010), because at its core, Krampus is more about spooky atmospherics than blood splatter, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Rating: 3 out of 5    

      

Trick R' Treat (2009)

Title: Trick or Treat (2009)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Review:

The Anthology horror film has been around for a while. Amongst them you can include Tales from the Crypt (1972) Vault of Horror (1973) The Illustrated Man (1969) and more recently Creepshow (1982) Tales from the Darkside: The Movie(1990) and Twilight Zone: The Movie(1983). I love these movies because they offer us short fast paced stories that aim to shock and get to the point quick, sometimes, that’s all we need. A quick horror jolt to the system! Same kind of thrill I get from watching old episodes of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt. Its that instant thrill and gratification of reading a short story that gets to the point quick.

The latest film to join the ranks of the horror anthology film is Trick R' Treat. A film that had a rocky production phase, where Warner Bros. suddenly pulled the film from its 2007 schedule, they pushed it back to 2008 and was finally released straight to DVD on October 2009 two years after it was produced. Why? Well, there’s various reasons swimming around. One, that they didn’t want the film to go up against Saw IV (yup, this movie has been made for that long!) which was also to be released in October 2007. Some also think that Michael Dougherty (the films director) was responsible in part for writing Superman Returns, and since that Superman flick was such a  flop, the studio retaliated by pulling Trick 'R Treat from its theatrical release. As of form of saying "thats what you get for writing such a crappy Superman flick!". To top things off, the film was produced by Legendary Pictures, Brian Syngers production company. If I remember correctly, expectation was high for that Superman flick, and more then one fanboy was disappointed by it, including myself. I enjoyed it, but lets face it, it could have been better. More then 300 million were spent in what was a very unimpressive flick. For that amount of money I was expecting Superman to go up against almighty God himself!

I guess that’s how Hollywood plays the game. You make them loose a couple of million dollars and they put you on the black list. So anyhows, is Trick R’ Treat any good? Should Warner Bros. have let Trick R’ Treat have its theatrical run? Well, word on the net is that this is the best Halloween movie ever, that its great, that it deserves a place among the best Halloween themed movies out there. I myself saw the previews for this movie and thought it looked cool as hell, and wondered why the heck it had not been released yet. Well, low and behold, Warner Bros. finally decided to let this one out into the world. How was it?

The film has four stories that all happen on Halloween night. It’s a bit different to some anthology movies where usually we get a “wrap around” story that joins all the stories together. Here, the film plays out more like Pulp Fiction or Amores Perros where what holds the different stories together is one common theme, in this case, its that everything happens on Halloween night. Sometimes, you’ll see one character that died on one story, on the other one, same as in Pulp Fiction, where you would see Vincent Vega when he had already died in some other part of the movie. Same deal here.

My problem with the movie was that it was uneven in tone. At times it plays like a child like fairy tale. One of the stories “The Halloween School Bus Massacre Revisited” is about these four kids who want to play a prank on a nerdy girl, so they take her to this place where these kids died and try and scare her. Its that type of tale that’s spooky but not too scary, which kind of leads you to believe that this is the kind of story that wont go too far. It’ll try and be spooky, but not too out there. But then they have a story about a girl who's apparently trying to have sex for the first time. Its called “Surprise Party” turns out the story ends up having girls getting naked and dancing in the fire and suddenly the story goes into R rated territory. So I’m like, is this film directed to kids, or adults? Or what? But ultimately, this uneven tone didn't really matter to me because the whole film is just spooky, atmospheric, gory, bloody, Halloween fun. 

Fred Dekker's Monster Squad suffered a similar problem years ago when it was first released in 1987. Actually, this ambiguity in tone is what killed Monster Squad in theaters. People didn’t know if the film was aimed as a fun harmless horror movie for kids, or if it’s a hardcore horror film for adults. As a result, the film tanked at the box office. Same thing happened with this movie in my opinion, it had an uneven tone. Sometimes it plays like a Halloween movie for kids…suddenly its hot chicks with their tits coming out of their dresses apparently searching for guys to have sex with.

But okay, it’s uneven in tone. What else can I say about it? I liked that the film really exploits the fact that it’s a Halloween movie and fills every square inch of the screen with Halloween ornaments, Pumpkins, dried leafs, the wind blowing, trick or treaters, candy, you know the whole Halloween shebang. You kind of feel like your living in The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Halloween Town. So kudos to the filmmakers for really capturing the spirit of the holiday, it seems that Michael Dougherty, the films director, really loves Halloween.

As in any good anthology film, they save the best for last. On the last tale we get to meet Sam, that little guy on the poster. The origins of 'Sam' are interesting, back when Michael Dougherty was just a student filmmaker, he directed a short animated film called “Seasons Greetings”. You can watch it cause it’s the only extra that this dvd includes; and it’s the coolest little animated feature. It just oozes atmosphere. And it presents us with this little character that feels like it came right out of Tim Burton's imagination. Or something you'd see in that movie 9. So anyhow, he has a burlap bag over his head, has the height of a little kid. And kills people. Why. Who is he? Who the hell knows! But apparently, he doesn’t want you saying bad things about Halloween, or not liking Halloween cause then you are going to get it. Who is this little creature? That remains a mystery, but he will kill you if you don’t like Halloween!

Brian Cox plays a old hermit who is the Halloween equivalent of Mr. Scrooge. Ah Humbug! Halloween is meaningless! And so he gets a lesson from the little creature known as Sam. I thought that idea was cool, to have Halloween version of Mr. Scrooge and its by far the most original thing this movie has going for it, I hope Sam gets explored a little more if they ever make a sequel. This film is drenched in Halloween coolness, I’m sure it’s what’s going to help it live through the years as the perfect film to watch on Halloween night. 

Rating: 4 out of 5