Think only Halloween has got the goods when it comes to anthology filmmaking? Well think again, because they ain’t got nothing on Christmas! Ever wanted to find out who would win in a fight between Santa and Krampus? Then click on as we revisit this new holiday classic from 2015, A Christmas Horror Story.

Because we’re weirdos, the wife and I like to ring in the holiday season each year by watching some of our favorite holiday themed horror movies. That’s right, while everyone else is watching It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol (which when you think about it, is really just a ghost story, right?), and A Charlie Brown Christmas; we’re running classics like Gremlins and Krampus. But in the last few years, we’ve thrown another film into the annual mix since we discovered it in the form of 2015’s A Christmas Horror Story.

Right off the bat, the five reasons why I love this film are as follows, in no particular order:

1.) A bad ass Santa!

2.) A bad ass Krampus!

3.) Flesh eating zombie elves!

4.) The coolest orchestral rendition of “Carol of the Bells” in the opening credits.

5.) William Shatner!

But more than that, it does for Christmas what Trick ‘r Treat did for Halloween. In fact, they share a lot of similarities, both in storytelling and technical execution. They’re both told in the form of an anthology, they both utilize the same seamless editing between each tale to tell the story, and they even both start at the end. Although A Christmas Horror Story doesn’t bounce back and forth in time as much as Trick ‘r Treat does, it does open in a very similar manner in which all of our characters cross paths within the larger world before they jaunt off down their own stories, all masterfully connected by wraparound story DJ, William Shatner. No, really, he actually plays a radio DJ by the name of Dangerous Dan (aka my other nickname ;). In this humble writer’s opinion, this should have been the Christmas movie Michael Dougherty should have made instead of 2015’s Krampus, not that I got anything against that film at all, just drawing a comparison.

Good Christmas horror films are hard to come by. Don’t get me wrong; we’ll always have classics like Silent Night Deadly Night and Black Christmas, the latter having seen two remakes now, but all the love for holiday horror films usually goes to the holiday that is synonymous with horror… Halloween. But not anymore, friends, because A Christmas Horror Story has got everything you could want in a quality horror film in the form of ghosts, monsters, and gore! A predominantly Canadian production led by the talents of directors Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, and Brett Sullivan who each bring their multi talented skills to the table, with credits ranging from Orphan Black to Ginger Snaps to Darknet (the amazingly creepy Canadian anthology series from 2013, not the Showtime documentary series that shares the same name), and proficiencies each in editing, directing, and producing. The film contains four tales and one wraparound story, each with their own scares that revolve around, in some shape or form, the Christmas holiday.

The first follows a group of students from a Catholic private school that break into their own campus on Christmas Eve in order to cover a story for their media class that revolves around the mysterious murders of two fellow students one year prior. As they creep down into an abandoned basement area of the school to get footage of the room in which the murders took place, we learn that the school used to be a convent back in the day and the facilities in the cellar were used to hide pregnant teens who had engaged in premarital sex, even grisly and archaic abortions were performed in order to hide the shame of the convent and its inhabitants. But one abortion in particular, performed on a fifteen year old by the name of Grace who had claimed she was a virgin and was pregnant in much the same way as Mary, had gone terribly wrong and killed the young Grace in the process. Seeking vengeance for her death and the death of her baby, the ghost of Grace possesses young Molly (Zoé De Grand Maison, Riverdale), who then seduces one of the boys to impregnate her, believing that it’s her fate to carry Grace’s unborn baby once again. Apparently this was the same horrible course of events that had befallen their classmates one year ago, yet not with the same successful results.

The next yarn has us join Scott (Adrian Holmes, Arrow, Supernatural), a young police officer that was assigned to the convent/school murders the year prior, out with his family as they journey into the woods to cut down a fresh tree for their home to decorate for the holiday. When their son goes missing during the visit, the frantic couple searches for him, only to find him hiding in the trunk of a large tree. Later on, once home, the boy starts to exhibit some very odd behavior, including stabbing his dad’s hand with a fork, creeping on his momma as she gets out of the shower, and scarfing down his food like some kind of starved animal. A mysterious call from a man in the middle of the night warns the mom that her son may not be all that he seems to be and angered by the accusation, she hangs up on the fellow. Later, when the strange child murders the dad (for a beating he delivered unto the boy earlier), the mom is finally convinced to return the boy to the forest from whence he came wherein she encounters the strange caller from earlier who explains to the mom that her boy had been replaced by a changeling and that he alone had been the sole caretaker of the “trolls” for a lifetime and her son is returned to her shortly thereafter.

Next, another family tale takes us on a last minute visit to auntie’s house. The daughter, Caprice (Amy Forsyth, Channel Zero) hands the keys off to our students from the first story so that they can break into the school before heading out with the rest of the family. Once at the aunt’s lavish mansion, little brother Duncan (Percy Hynes White, The Gifted) purposefully breaks an old family heirloom Krampus ornament. Soon after the family leaves, a mysterious creature crosses their path on the road and causes their car to slide off and become disabled. As they make their way through the darkened woods in an effort to find help, each member gets slowly picked off by an unseen creature until cornered in a church and it’s finally revealed to be Krampus. Caprice makes her way back to the aunt’s house demanding an explanation and comes to the realization on her own that the broken ornament must have released the spirit of the Krampus. Yet the auntie insists that the Krampus is just another Christmas spirit that can inhabit those who are filled with enough anger to punish the wicked. Caprice begins to change herself once she comes to the conclusion that auntie left the family out in the cold to divert the Krampus’ attention from herself.

Our final story takes place in Santa’s fortress in the North Pole. A mysterious virus comes over an elf who then in turn begins to attack other elves, turning each one into a flesh-eating ghoul along the way. Santa has to stave off the spreading infection by taking out any infected elf he finds before the entire staff becomes sick. Oddly enough, this single tale contains the most gore in the whole film with Santa delivering some spectacular kills. After being forced to put Mrs. Claus out of her misery once discovering she too has been infected, Santa makes it to the stables to check on his beloved reindeer. Once there, the true engineer of the chaos reveals himself and a battle for the ages commences… Santa vs. Krampus! Santa does away with the menace, only to be killed himself, in one of the greatest twist endings to grace a holiday screen in years.

I love this film and I think you will too. It never saw a wide theatrical release and after running mainly in the festival circuit, it went to VOD. As such, I can’t imagine it had a huge budget (I’ve scoured the interwebs and can’t find anything as far as cost goes), but it doesn’t show at all. There are some great visual effects throughout the entirety of Santa’s story, as well as some costly make-up. The Krampus makeup and costume, which appear in two of the anthology’s sequences, is top notch and brought to stunning life by Canadian actor and stuntman, Rob Archer.

Shatner does a superb job as the local town DJ, offering some lighter fare between edits of the four tales. In one sequence we find out through the appearance of a Christmas card, that Shatner’s character is in fact the grandfather to the children that appear in the Krampus story, giving us just one more connection between all our characters and their stories. Stay tuned past the above the line credits to see Shatner offer up some more witty outtakes in the left margin of the credit roll.

Yeah, an effigy of Mary crying blood? Never a good sign.

Of course no film is perfect and this one too has its flaws. Some of the lore regarding the Krampus is way off. In one scene, Duncan declares soon after midnight on Christmas Eve (technically Christmas Day), that it’s officially Krampusnacht, when in actuality Krampusnacht is actually celebrated way earlier in December on the fifth. In western European culture it’s also said that St. Nick and the Krampus actually travel together, one to reward children who have been good and the other to punish unruly ones, so they surely wouldn’t be bitter enemies, nonetheless battle each other. But then that wouldn’t provide such entertaining fare, would it? My only other issue was in the lack of some character development that would have been useful for us, as an audience, to relate to a character better or in the least, understand their actions. But these are really minimal gripes that most people won’t even notice or care about.

Beware large trees with large holes in the trunk that can swallow up your children.

So with that, I suggest you too add this brilliant, witty, and thoroughly entertaining film to your holiday mix, as we did ours a few years ago. I assure you won’t be disappointed. You can catch it now streaming on Shudder or just do what we did after our third or fourth watch, and pick up the DVD for a very reasonable price. Gruβ vom Krampus, Kinder!

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Written by Dan

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