Krampus

Dog, Garbage Food, Some Taxidermy Thing, the usual ****.

This was fun. In a weird way.

Krampus almost verges on comedy at moments, and it's self-awareness earns a few knowing eyebrows, but there's a degree to which the movie feels lazy. I dunno if I'd count the CG snow, the CG gingerbread men, or the somewhat CG(?) clown worm thing, but I do count the story in that because it's about as formulaic as it can get.

Estranged family is socially pressured to have Christmas together. Son is essentially bullied for still believing in Santa Claus and has his embarrassingly insightful letter read out at the dinner table (good parenting by the way), he temporarily loses his faith in Santa, shreds the letter, this summons Krampus, there's a period in which characters are picked off but the cause is not commonly accepted to be supernatural, something almost supernatural happens they all witness and then we have Knowing Old Woman deliver a "way back when on a night such as this" speech and yada yada yada, my eyes couldn't roll harder.

I grant the movie credit for at least subverting my expectations on a handful of occasions, such as not taking a jumpscare opportunity where I would expect a lesser movie to, and for the most part the movie's... not even a "slow burn", let alone scary I think. You expect creepy ****, that's a given, and you get it, but perhaps because the plot is so bog standard I wasn't really invested to the point of the movie getting to me. The characters are all either A.) blank slates, B.) ********, or C.) so neurotic and wound tight that I hadn't really much sympathy for when they overreacted to mildly offensive behavior on part of the other characters. The Dorothy character (I think her name is) has her well metaphorically poisoned from the outset by outright apologizing for her presence in the movie, essentially promising that she's some unforgivably ugly character, but really she just comes off as bluntly honest, if a bit insensitive at times.

Basically, I didn't really care who died and I wasn't terribly surprised by the order in which the go (although I didn't expect the kids to be so disposable).

Really, the shining light of this movie is more the concept and execution of that concept, the movie does a good job of portraying Krampus and his myriad Christmas-themed minions to be more of a presence than an individual, he's more of a force of nature than a killer and I liked that obfuscation of fantasy.


He does run headlong into a plothole regarding the Santa Clause-esque conditions under which he appears, if all it takes is for someone to lose faith in Santa Claus, then shouldn't the rest of Son's family have dealt with him already? Does Krampus really meaningfully distinguish between someone losing faith in Santa and ******** who would freely debauch the holiday and might never have had faith to begin with? I'm not a fan of the faith gambit anyway, whether we're talking Tim Allen or not.

Anyway, I like that Krampus's minions are increasingly grotesque perversions of established Christmas tropes. Krampus himself remains suitably unrevealed throughout the majority of the movie, seen only as a big hunched cloaked figure with awesome horns, and while I was at first hoping that they wouldn't reveal Krampus up-close and ruin the mood with a Jeepers Creepers type monster face, I was pleasantly surprised that they maintained the theme thus far and showed Krampus to be a desiccated Santa equivalent beneath the hood. He looks really freaky and it's difficult not to favor this design (with all the chains and bells and Bing Crosby substitute for Jeepers Creepers as "inappropriate stalking music") over the alternatives you're likely to find on Google Images.

Cool monster design.

Not one I would expect a child who still believes in Santa Claus to try and talk down with a straight face, that kid was NOT written realistically.