A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
The world doesn't need more Christmas horror films. What it needs is more good horror movies for the holidays. The problem is for every Rare Exports or Krampus a number of hack directors turn out stuff like Jack Frost. Producer Steven Hoban realized this and decided to rush out a Christmas anthology that he believed would be a cross between Creepshow and Pulp Fiction, weaving four different stories together with tenuous connections to each other rather than the normal anthology format.
Santa Claus (George Buza) is preparing for Christmas at the North Pole when suddenly his Elves begin to turn on him, becoming zombies that he must fight in order to save Christmas and his wife Marta (Debra McCabe). Meanwhile, in the Canadian town of Bailey Downs, aspiring journalist Molly (Zoé De Grand Maison) and her friends Ben (Alex Ozerov-Meyer) and Dylan (Shannon Cook) sneak into the local high school to investigate a murder that happened a year prior. The group gets trapped and becomes the target of an angry ghost.
Meanwhile Scott (Adrian Holmes), the officer that was investigating the incident, takes his wife Kim (Olunike Adeliyi) and child Will (Orion John) out to get a Christmas tree. Will disappears while they are poaching the tree from private land and, when he reappears, is not the same. Nearby Taylor (Jeff Clarke) visits his Aunt Edda (Corinne Conley) for Christmas along with his wife Diane (Michelle Nolden) and kids Caprice (Amy Forsyth) and Duncan (Percy Hynes White). After getting stranded in the forest they find out that the German legends of Krampus (Rob Archer) are quite real. Throughout it all local DJ Dangerous Dan (William Shatner) ploughs through Christmas Eve with some liquid fortitude as a charity drive at the local mall turns into chaos.
The problem with A Christmas Horror Story is that the idea of doing an anthology holiday story in this matter had already been done, and done better, by Michael Daugherty's Trick 'r Treat. To make matters worse, Daugherty was making the far superior Krampus at the same time. Despite this being something of a reunion of writers and directors from the Ginger Snaps series it seems that some of the problems that made the follow-up films not work as well have carried through. The Krampus story has a satisfying ending, it is fun to watch Santa go toe-to-toe with the horned demon in his own story, but the best one is the story about Will and his parents. It is creepy and maintains a tension that the other stories do not.
As for William Shatner, he does the usual "we got a big star to sit behind a desk for a day" routine, but at least he's entertaining and it doesn't feel like he's phoning it in. It might have been better if this was a more traditional anthology with Shatner providing the narration, but that still wouldn't have changed the fact that even the best stories seem half-written and lacking any real surprises. We get a good blend of practical and digital effects, but that's about all. This was a good effort, but otherwise failed to entertain the way it was meant to.
A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Time: 99 minutes
Starring: William Shatner, George Buza, Zoé De Grand Maison, Alex Ozerov-Meyer, Shannon Kook, Amy Forsyth, Rob Archer, Adrian Holmes, Olunike Adeliyi, Orion John, Jeff Clarke, Michelle Nolden
Directors: Grant Harve, Steven Hoban, Brett Sullivan
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