Krampus

This new Christmas movie doesn't really know what it wants to be.  It opens with a very negative view of the consumerism of the season, showing shoppers at some Wal-Mart like store stomp an unfortunate greeter underfoot before getting into brawls over who grabbed this or that first.   Stuffed animals are ripped asunder and security guards use tazers with glee.  With this, we know a dark Christmas is coming.

 

The story centers on Max and his family.  Max is at an age where belief in Santa is unexpected.  He is tormented by his cousins for having written a letter to Santa.  Feeling embarrassed, he tears it up and tosses it out the window.  Moments later, dark clouds arrive and soon a blizzard of epic proportions knocks out the power.  Then it gets really weird.

 

There are times when the movie wants to explain the pathos of each character, playing like some family drama.  We learn that Max's parents have been drifting apart, he is no longer as close to his older sister as he once was, his Uncle Howard wanted boys which is why his older daughters dress and act as they do, and so on and so forth.  This family background proceeded beyond the introduction phase of the movie, which was awkward.  Max's grandmother spoke almost exclusively in German though everyone else spoke to her in English.  That was awkward, especially when she explains the plot to everyone in English halfway through the movie.  Worse, she initially gets subtitles and then it stops.  Actually, I didn't learn German in the first 20 minutes of the movie; why have the subtitles stopped?  The movie was sometimes comical, especially with Uncle Howard.

 

Krampus is a goat-legged fellow who is the evil Santa in Germanic lore.  Where Santa gives presents and spreads joy, Krampus punishes the naughty.  And it turns out that Krampus has a number of helpers.  There are gingerbread men, an evil teddy bear, a voracious jack-in-the-box, an animated robot toy, a bunch of masked elves, and a never-seen beast that burrows under the snow and drags off characters.  This vast menagerie of monsters was exasperating.  The movie might have been better called Minions of Krampus.

 

For a horror film, it wasn't scary.  After all, Krampus is coming for the naughty people and it is hard to feel much sympathy for many of them.  Max - the central character - spends much of the film as a bystander while the adults fight off the latest Krampus goon.  The movie ends very badly but then there is a twist which doesn't really improve the ending.  This was written and directed by the man who penned the disastrous Superman Returns (2006).  Skip this one.