Krampus: The Reckoning

Sometimes you get lucky with small budget films and you get something cheesy but good in a cheesy way. Take Silent Night, Deadly Night back in the day. Sometimes, you have to settle for friends or untried actors with a not-too-good script, a not-too good director and a god-awful sound mixer and editor.

This is, sadly, one of the latter. The timing was slow, the scenes had a lot of long pauses as if they were hoping that would make the movie long enough to be useful with waaay too little script.

The leads were unbelievable, unlikeable, with no reason to cheer for them, and in all honesty, the little kids probably did the best acting in the movie.

And as other's mentioned, the movie just suddenly wrapped-up really quickly and you don't even care about the ending since you never liked the leads in the first place.

That popping/crackling soundtrack is always a sign of a bad movie. You can hear it often in another clunker "The Eaters".

I've seen student films and Youtube videos using DSLR cameras that were shot better, sounded better, written better, acted better, directed better, edited better, and were, in general, just better.

I am not going to call it awful because the story was pretty good, but the acting was terrible. The lead female with her droopy sad eyes, became annoying to look at just like that big bald guy with the ugly smile who looked like Daddy Warbucks. This story is interesting but so unbelievably rushed at the end. Some parts of this movie made no sense. Maybe it is just me, I dunno. I did not love this movie or hate this movie. I am somewhere in between. I think if the acting was better I might have enjoyed this movie a whole lot more. Regardless, if you want to see a movie with bad acting and ugly actors, this is the movie for you.

This film has very little to do with Christmas (I remember seeing one Christmas tree) there a few comments of "Merry Christmas" but other than that it doesnt have any Christmas feel to it. I can only imagine that it must be Christmas in a warm area because nobody so much as wears a jacket. Krampus has about 5 seconds of screen time throughout the whole movie. It's really just a movie about a creepy little orphan girl. The acting is stiff and the characters are cardboard cliche. Its hard to find any sympathy toward any character as the little orphan girl is an irritating brat, the cops just make up police terminology to sound cool and the psychologist is a absolute moron. The psychologist even gets outsmarted by the little orphan girl when she tries to question her, and ends up telling the girl more personal information than she was getting out of her young patient; which says a lot about her level of education. Does this woman even have a degree? Even the cops in the movie are creepers. One married cop tries to cox the psychologist to join him at the bar, then the next night shows up at her house drunk in the middle of the night, and they eventually end up in bed together. My guess is that she was screwing the cop all along to keep her fake degree a secret.

Overall, the story is boring, the acting is horrible, it barely qualifies as a Christmas movie, and the villain is basically non-existent. Just another film trying to cash in on the Krampus legacy.

Okay, there is one glaring review by someone who gave this movie a 9 and raves about what a great movie it is. And even states that it is far superior to several other Krampus themed movies coming out this year. HHAAA!!! I saw one of the others, "Krampus", in the theater a week ago, and I must tell you it was also absolute trash, but it's an Oscar winner compared to this bucket of movie puke! The fact that this certain 9-star "reviewer" constantly praises the young lead actress and the director leads me to believe that this person is, somehow, tied to this movie (probably the director himself or the father of the actress using an IMDb alias profile).

This movie was terrible! Just terrible. It drags on and on and on with very weak dialogue and slow action until a scene finally changes. Sloppy directing and some horrible camera work. I think the director may have taken a home-study course in video production... and flunked out.

Here's a little storytelling advice for the director: The sloppy, white-trash, soft-core porn scene in the beginning was TOTALLY unnecessary and a scene like that does not serve to advance the plot. You just put it in there to try to give your horror movie some kind of substance, and probably a couple of friends a chance to be naked in a horror movie. It was like watching a porn video made by some amateur next door neighbors - and not very good looking ones, at that. So next time (God help us if there is one) skip that kind of garbage. It doesn't add validity to your horror movie, it only serves as a sign of weak storytelling.

And stop lingering with your scenes. They just drag on. Build some tension.

And for God's sake, spring for some kind of real creature makeup effects instead of a lo-res, poorly animated monster. The burnt remains of his victims were more convincing than Krampus himself. And by the way, his name is pronounced Krum-poohs, not Kram-pus. "Kram-pus" sounds too much like "Gramps" and it just really doesn't invoke any level of fear. Do your research before your write or direct a movie.

The young lead actress is nothing to behold, just another face in a crowd of 1000's of hopefuls. I know we all want to encourage young talent, but come on, Mr. IMDb Alias, her acting was not that great. I've seen better acting on Nick Jr. sitcoms.

And the guy playing the lead detective... wow. Did he take acting lessons from Ferris Bueller's Economics teacher? You know, the guy who just droned "Bueller, Bueller" for an eternity? There was absolutely no level of excitement in this guy's voice whatsoever. He sounded like he had a perpetual taking-a-dump kind of grunt to every word he mumbled. Christian Bale did it better as Batman.

Well, in closing, if you're considering watching this, I'd suggest you just skip this piece of garbage and thank heavens you weren't a part of its production. Or you could do your very own MST3k episode with it.

Made to hitch a free ride on the success of Michael Dougherty's movie Krampus, this rushed lost X-files episode offers no scares, unlike Dougherty's previous holiday classic, Trick'r'Treat, but a ton load of cringes instead.

Krampus: the Reckoning has all the elements of a god awful fake- buster (a movie made to be confused with a popular blockbuster and capitalize on its success): it has the worst CGI you have ever seen, an over-complicated plot with too many elements that go nowhere, wooden actors, obvious post-production dubbing and so much other signs of a cheap shill of a movie that you can't help but expect a boom Mic to appear in the shot at some point.

But the worst thing about this movie has got to be the main child actor. It does make me feel like the world's biggest a-hole to pick on a little girl like that, but man is Amelia Haberman awful in this movie. I don't know if it's bad direction or was there no direction at all, but her character does not come off as sinister, or intimidating, or scary, as it's obviously supposed to be - no, throughout the whole thing she acts like an annoying over the top little brat who tries so hard to act like Hannibal Lecter that you just want to slap her in the face and say "Enough, no TV for a month!"

The least you can say is that she's memorable enough to probably get better parts in the future, though I do hope she tries better in more serious roles in the future.

I am mad at this movie for tricking me and I am mad at the shysters who make such films. It's garbage.