Krampus (2015)
That's the one with Adam Scott and David Koechner... not the rip-offs called Krampus Reckoning and Krampus Unleashed that were made by (probably) The Asylum or whoever.
Some spoilers:
A family who can't stand each other, and the youngest son writes a letter to Santa asking for love and affection and success for his family members.
Given that everyone else is simply having digs at each other, all the time, he decides not to post his letter and rips it up... taking back his Christmas Wishes for peace and love.
So, because of his innocent but justified decision, instead of getting Santa to show up on Christmas Eve... the boy unwittingly invites Krampus...
Erm... billed as comedy-horror? There's not a great deal of comedy.
The start sequence is borderline hilarious in a satire kind of way... but then the film turns into an Evil Dead kind of comedy.
As in... you sit thinking "am I meant to laugh here?".
Not that the film is bad... it's just unsure of what it wants to be.
There's a few funny scenes, mainly from David Koechner. One scene on particular is when he's taking a shotgun to an army of Gingerbread Men who in turn are firing a nailgun at him while he uses a breadboard as a shield.
Then there's the scenes in the attic, fighting demonic toys.
It's a solidly disturbing scene, especially when Toni Collette gets strung up by Christmas lights by a demonic toy while the kids are being swallowed whole by a giant jack-in-the-box.
But it's the rest of the stuff going on, and the cast involved who are unsure as to what they're supposed to be doing.
One minute they're serious, the next they're too jokey and quipping funny things satirically. Some of the time the jokey lines are in serious scenes, and the serious lines and acting are during something that should be taken as funny.
If it had dropped the plan of trying to be comedy, then yeah, it could have been pretty damned scary.
In turn, if it had dropped the idea of wanting to be a solid horror, then yeah, it could have been hilarious.
The mixture of the two genres
from scene to scene rather than lacing them together, for instance like Tremors does, or Zombieland or even Beetlejuice for that matter, Krampus doesn't
quite work.
The end result, is a just a really weird fantasy movie.
Worth a watch though given how odd it all is.
I think the right term of phrase isn't Comedy-Horror... it's Offbeat-Horror.
(My own ratings would be between 51-60%).