A Christmas Horror Story

I enjoyed this movie more each time I saw it after noticing how every story had connections that I missed the first time. I feel like it deserves a higher rating but whatever, I enjoy it and watch it every December.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a family that wanders onto the wrong property to cut down a Christmas tree and in doing so unleashes Krampus and loses their son. The release of Krampus offsets Santa's magic leading to elves no longer being invinsible and after dying returning as zombies. The parents and Santa will need to find a way to offset these daunting events.

This movie is codirected by Grant Harvey (Heartland), Steven Hoban (Darknet) and Brett Sullivan (Frontier). This picture stars William Shatner (Star Trek), George Buza (X-Men), Rob Archer (Pixels), Zoé De Grand Maison (Riverdale), Amy Forsyth (Hell Fest) and Olunike Adeliyi (She Never Died).

The cinematography in this is very good. The settings, attire, makeup and masks are perfect. This is one of the better versions of Krampus, definitely top 2. The elves is this are excellent and the highlight of the movie. Their lines and dialogue are hilarious. Did I mention William Shatner is in this? The kill scenes are solid but the sex scenes are not. The ending is way better than it should be and was very smart and well executed.

Overall this is a very solid addition to the Krampus universe and is definitely worth a viewing. I would score this a 6-6.5/10 and strongly recommend seeing it.

A horror movie anthology that centers around 4 stories related to Christmas (except 1 which actually isn't).

Story 1: a very unoriginal story of young guys breaking into an empty building on Christmas eve. Not very orignial and not even very Christmas related but oh well. The lesser story in my opniion.

Story 2: Santa fighting off his elves turning into zombies. Sounds silly ? Wait for the end !

Story 3: a family steal a Christmas tree from a grove only to find out their son isn't the same anymore. Not a very orignial story either but I still liked it.

Story 4: a family visit their in-laws, and come into confrontation with a malevolent Christmas entity. Likely made in the wake of the Krampus movie.

Some reviewers complained that the story were interwoven and shown simultaneously, but that didn't bother me.

Not a masterpiece but you can do worse compared to the schlock that's made in the horror genre.

It's Christmas Eve. Three high school students go to school to film a documentary about the disappearance of two students last Christmas. Some part of the school was at some point a convent and there's more to the place than just the killings.

A family goes to the forest to cut a Christmas tree. At some point their young son vanishes but they do find him after a while inside a tree. When they return home the kid isn't quite himself.

A family travels to visit the father's rich aunt. But she's creepy and hostile so they quickly leave. But the daughter stole some trinket and the son dropped a Krampus figurine and broke it. That will come back to haunt them as their car breaks down and they have to walk through the forest. Things quickly get bloody.

Santa is getting ready to deliver gifts. Suddenly one of his elves goes nuts, drives a hatchet through his hand and dies. Soon all the elves become zombies and violently attack Santa who will have to take them out one by one.

All these stories are framed by a radio host who is in the Christmas spirit. Krampus makes an appearance in most of these stories and even confronts Santa himself. But when all appears said and done there's an neat unexpected twist.

The stories aren't told independently but are interwoven and aren't anything special initially but improve markedly once they take a turn to the dark. The story of the kid in particularly has some creepy moments. The story of the kids playing investigators in a locked school during Christmas Eve no less is very annoying at first until things change. The whole business with the radio host was mostly irrelevant. It's good to see Santa get a cool role as well as all the resent fuzz about Krampus. I wasn't expecting much from this movie but I was surprised that it did have something different and enjoyable to offer.

You never know what are you getting yourself into with movies like this. Luckily, A Christmas Horror Story gets most of the beats right.

It's a mix of multiple intersected story lines movie, fun horror movie and Christmas movie. There are even few known names here, but generally all the cast does a good job. Cool stories, couple of cool twists here and there and pretty sweet FX makes this movie a fun watch.

Yeah, it's nothing original and over the top, but it's well made and not too long. I'm guessing this movie will get repeated Christmas viewings in the years to come. Recommended but keep you expectations real.