Secret Santa

At a glance, this is another super low budget holiday slasher flick, and while those are becoming a dime a dozen, I still think this one stands out for several reasons. For starters, it is void of slasher Santas (despite the box art) while still being festively linked to the holiday season. Second, the filmmakers clearly knew their budget limitations and decided to give it more of an 80s B horror/comedy grindhouse throwback kind of vibe, which absolutely works. Likewise, they had to improvise on the gore and I'm sensing some PA ended up hitting the grocery store for assorted shredded meats and maybe some Spam. Again, it works. Last, it doesn't take itself too seriously and that actually is really important with a low budget film. The acting is amateur but a lot of the characters are intentionally over the top which ends up making it a pretty fun movie. Overall, if you don't mind low budget and campy, definitely give this one a shot.

A throwback to the 80's slashers complete with dirty, gritty prints to give it that grindhouse feel but set in today's time. A sadistic Santa is sending people gifts that will eventually kill them. If you get a cleaver that will be your fate. He stays true to his word. We see this with a girl who had just opened her gift and receives a hair dryer. Moments later she is in the tub so when the killer goes to throw the hair dryer in the water the plug doesn't reach. He just proceeds to beat her to death with the thing.

It stays true to the fell of the low budget slasher but it does take over 50 minutes to get going. Not too gory but you get the 80's effects with the dismemberments etc. They even throw in a few twists along the way.

I'm not sure what's in the water as of late, but it seems like everyone and their mother have been churning out Christmas themed slasher movies in the past 5 years. Most of them are pretty charmless, but Secret Santa has its heart in the right place and writer/director Mike McMurran at least attempts to bring a little extra character development and a sense of humor to go along with the gore.

Secret Santa borrows a few pages from the likes of Black Christmas and To All A Goodnight with its house filled with nubile young college girls who are about to have more than student loan and boyfriend drama to contend with as a murderer with a ski mask begins to terrorize and kill them one by one during a secret santa party.

Like most movies around this budget, the cinematography is competent but flat at times without a whole lot of style and some of the sound mixing leaves a bit to be desired, but the actors are above average for a film of this type. Special mention goes to Annette Wozniak as Nicole who gets the most interesting character to sink her teeth into. She's struggling with a cheating boyfriend (Brent Baird who looks like Finn Wittrock's long lost brother) and with her sex cam business she's set up to help pay off her student loans. There's even a fairly progressive scene where she tells her boyfriend about her sex cam work and he's pretty supportive of her. Wozniak carries most of the film herself through her insurmountable amount of charm and she's easily the high point of the film.

Besides the characters of Dewayne and Carissa (he's mostly shrill and painfully unfunny and she's too bitter and angry to ever warm up to), the rest of them are an agreeable group to spend 75 minutes with. I'm not sure if I enjoyed spending as much time with them as McMurran does, because it does take about 50 minutes to get to any major action (besides an opening kill scene). Once the film gets going, the tone begins to shift slightly into something more resembling a dark comedy. Some of it works and some of it doesn't, but you can't fault McMurran for trying something different. At least the results are usually entertaining.

There's a great gag where a hairdryer the killer is using to electrocute a victim in the bathtub with falls out of the wall socket when he tries to throw it into the water, so he has to beat his victim to death with it instead. Even funnier, the length of the killer's "why I did it" monologue is poked fun at during the climax of the film.

Some of the gore effects might have been more effective if the camera didn't linger on them as much, but that's a small complaint in the grand scheme of things, especially when most of the movie is so much fun. Secret Santa is definitely a gift worth unwrapping.

Living in a small town, a group of college students are trying to prepare for the holidays with a special party and gift-exchange at their house which brings out a slew of secrets, hidden personalities, and a savage killer who starts to target the group one by one forcing them to fight back.

Overall, this was a decent enough slasher throwback. Among the better features here is the simplistic setup that works well enough at being this particular style by detailing the lives of the people involved in the community. By bringing a series of clues about who they are and what the individual points of their various relationships with not just having to deal with their normal college duties but also trying to work through discreet online personalities, clandestine hookups, and general burden of their lives, it creates a fairly intriguing setup that starts the film off quite nicely. When this is all matched alongside the series of clues about the strange killer in their midst who uses a great tactic of introducing a Secret Santa gift exchange to cause division in the group while these stories play out, it's a generally solid setup that's worthwhile enough in this type of feature. That leads into the other enjoyable aspect of this one that works quite well here is the rather fun finale where the killing finally gets going. While featuring the opening attack on the students in their house, the only thing that happens until a massacre at the end is a singular ambush sequence that shows off a hint of what's to come in the big finish with cheesy effects in a brutal concept to bring about their death. The rampage in the house is handled quite well with the idea of the previous build-up of the characters helping to provide some hint of the type of activity to come with the style of impressive shock ambushes that take place involving a slew of cheesy features to help tide this one over as the slew of encounters here provide a rapid fire pace in this section of the film. Combined with the solid ending twist that's effective if not entirely necessary, these are all enough to enjoy here as there are a few issues with this one that hold it down. One of the main aspects with this one is the generally glacial pacing that never provides much of anything until the finale. By focusing heavily on the different members of the group and going through each of the various stories involved here with the rocky relationship involving the one being a webcam model, a jealous ex trying to get with her boyfriend, a stoner trying to get the drugs out of his system to party, and the teacher trying to perv on everyone at the party, the set pieces here are given much more room in the running time that happens at the expense of the killer's presence knocking people off. It's all generally lackluster and doesn't make the film that enjoyable, much like the incredibly underwhelming reasoning for the killer to go for the rampage which is immensely stupid and lame, has no connection to anyone, and makes for a highly non-threatening time here. These all manage to hold the film down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Rear Nudity, and drug use.

Also titled Secret Santa. Early 90s Straight to video college buddy let's make a horror movie fan film schlock. Direction and editing make it interesting, but the comedy is juvenile and tries hard to hijack the film. Instead of using 16mm scratch effects, the better choice would have been VHS tracking lines. The acting is clumsy and immature and no actor separates themselves with any charisma, which is probably right so that you root for the next clumsy kill. One plus is the use of practical effects, the hairdryer scene being the highlight. Random note: eggnog, like blood is supposed to be thicker than water. Music vacillates between nintendocore and synth used in Eli Roth Thanksgiving trailer. As we reach the final 20 mins of the film one wonders if this was filmed as a stream of consciousness with the sole purpose to make some gore effects. No knock on that. I've done that. Best served earlier in a movie marathon, 1/4 in the bag, with a few friends. Or better yet on some horror film fest circuit. Maybe then the humor would sputter a bit better. Survived with a couple drams of Old Soul. Warning: The closing credits may cause seizures or flashbacks.