Secret Santa

Shot on video with a godawful grainy 'grindhouse' filter effect (Quentin Tarantino has a lot to answer for), comedy slasher Secret Santa delivers some fairly decent gore effects, the majority of which occur in the final twenty minutes, meaning that there's the best part of an hour of 'character development' to get through first - not great when most of the characters in question are so tedious, the script lamentably dumb, and the acting unbearable.

The worst offender is, without a doubt, Geoff Almond as hopped-up loser Dwayne, who is as irritating as he is bald, but there are plenty of other obnoxious types guaranteed to rankle, including smarmy professor Ramsey (Tony Nash) who is diddling his student Olivia (Nicole Kawalez), promiscuous blonde Carissa (Keegan Chambers), and two-timing Bryan (Brent Baird), who cheated on his girlfriend Nicole (Annette Wozniak), the only likeable character in the whole film (even if she is a web cam model).

Nicole is, not surprisingly, the film's 'final girl', all of her friends bumped off before the end of the film by a masked killer who has been sending them Secret Santa gifts that reveal how they will be killed: a meat cleaver, an electric knife, gardening shears (for a spot of graphic penis pruning!), and a hairdryer (which leads to the funniest moment in the film, when the cable proves too short for the killer to throw it into the victim's bath). The bloody and well executed gore (head smashed in, decapitations, chainsawed legs) in the final act, and the occasional spot of gratuitous female nudity (although, rather strangely, no boobage), make it just about worth persevering until the end.

4.5/10, rounded down to 4 for the aged/distressed look, which is completely unconvincing and totally unnecessary.

This was titled Christmassacre on Prime, and it should not be confused with the 2018 Adam Marcus-directed comedy/horror Secret Santa on the same platform. Regardless this one is an amateur slasher comedy. And considering that this film's budget was apparently expired foodstamps, some of the dialogue is actually pretty funny and the quasi-professional actors deliver relatively decent performances. Unfortunately the story is trite, the practical effects look silly and the budgetary constraints detract from virtually every scene. There's a sense that the people involved in the production have real talent, but there wasn't the time or money available to develop their ideas into something entertaining or even fully coherent.

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.

Secret Santa (2015) is currently available on Tubi. The story follows a group of friends who come together for the holidays. During their Secret Santa gift exchange, tensions rise as they discover someone has a sinister agenda. The festivities soon turn deadly as one of the friends is revealed to be a ruthless killer-but who?

Written and directed by Mike McMurran (The Final Ride), the film stars Annette Wozniak (The Final Ride), Keegan Chambers (Age of the Living Dead), Niki Kerro (Escape the Field), and Tony Nash (Blood & Treasure).

This is one of those films that's clunky and awkwardly executed, yet still keeps you curious enough to see where it's going. The humor often misses the mark, creating several awkward moments, and there's an overuse of unnecessary vomit scenes that add little to the story. On the other hand, the horror elements are well done, with a fantastic throat-slashing sequence and some enjoyable blood splatter and stabbing scenes that stand out.

In conclusion, Secret Santa is far from a great movie, but its solid horror effects may appeal to fans of the Christmas-horror genre. I'd score this a 5/10 and only recommend it with tempered expectations.

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.