I decided I wanted to do some christmas horror movies. I wasn’t familiar with this one, so thought I’d give it a shot. The premise is actually a pretty cool idea. Santa was a demon in hell. One that was extremely cruel. He lost a bet and was punished by having to be nice and deliver toys to everyone on Earth. A punishment that was to last 1000 years. (well, 1001 because as with so many movies, the math of a millennium is never done proper. 1005 was when he was punished, and the movie takes place in 2005. And suddenly the revelation that his punishment just ended. Well….

I do like the idea for this, but it was really poorly done.

From the opening scene where we have a massively dysfunctional family eating their holiday meal. I’m not even sure who all is at the table. Let’s see. Father figure and his wife. Oldest daughter and her husband. Two younger daughters (still mid 20’s) and also a dog. The husband is not only disloyal to his wife (oldest daughter) but actively engaging in sexual activities under the table with the mother. Which is weird on so many levels. Santa crashes in and begins killing them all. Mind you, nobody really tries to fight back or flee. Because the scene is easier if they don’t need more than this one set. He kills all 6 in dumb ways and the story moves on. Well, the script moves on, not sure I would call it much of a story.

The setting of the movie is a town called Hell. Because of course. And there are plenty of dumb “Hell” word jokes to be had. Our actual main characters are a pair of teens that work at a butcher shop and are in some sort of a relationship. The boy gets a story dump from his grandfather explaining the story of Santa losing a bet and getting the “be nice” punishment. Meanwhile, Santa is running around killing anyone and everyone he sees. In dumb ways. Also in ways that are the opposite of so many movie tropes. Often in movies people fight and take punishment that would have killed them five times over, but they fight on. In this, someone gets their face dunked in water and has now drowned. Someone has Christmas lights wrapped around their throat and are instantly choked to death. Tossed against a wall and they die… But then at times we have someone impaled through the neck by a Menorrah holding them 2 feet off the ground for hours, but not quite dead yet. 

They tried to set up a horror movie based around Christmas in the way that Rare Exports did. And failed. They tried to make it a funny horror thing like Stan Against Evil. And failed. And to be fair, that is not an easy thing to accomplish. Well, doing both and being good is not easy to accomplish. They did both and failed, that was easy for them to accomplish.

Safe to say that I will never be enticed to watch this movie again. It really isn’t even worth going into detail about the movie. Stupid Santa demon kills people, bad jokes are made, the grandpa turns out to be the one he lost the bet to, Santa demon is defeated, and then an end scene with Santa demon to set up a sequel (that thank god they never made.) 

I think that we have a below 1 star rating. So time to break out the black star.