virtuafooty

This was supposed to be my family's proper start to Christmas, but oh dear what an anti climax.

The main problem as folks have said is the pacing, this drags terribly. Half an hour shorter and it would certainly have been an easier watch, but even then it suffers from plot issues and miscasting - leading to lazy acting, and not particularly likeable characters.

What is going on at the moment that horrid little pudgy kids with no charm and ridiculous hair that were previously cast as bully types seem to be the norm as regular kids?

The saving pieces of the film were anything that involved world building, the architecture and the creatures at the North Pole and in Krampusland. Although these were never intended to stand up to big screen viewing and some of the shots involving miniatures are truly terrible.

It's also a shame that the same attention to world building wasn't given to Chris Evans characters' back story as even with a small character arc there were none of the feels you expect to get from a seasonal movie.

There's a bit of action mixed in but I fear this is going the way of other Christmas box office bombs like Santa Claus the movie.

If you find anything else to watch do it and wait until you can watch this for free.

Firstly its a shame they put the flash forward at the start - it looks so bad you may want to turn it off, but it shows you nothing in the grand scheme of things.

After that it plods along quite slowly for the most part, but it is watchable - the acting ranges from mediocre to terrible, but the odd joke, some satire and a bit of camaraderie help it along.

It isn't really a horror movie 75% of the time, there's no tense frames waiting for spooky sights or a bumps in the night that you'd expect in a standard found footage movie, but you do get a sense that eventually its only going in one particular direction.

All that changes in the final 5-10 minutes, and how you view the closing scenes will no doubt impact your overall opinion of the film - I suspect your rating will probably go up or down by 2 stars.

For me it went up, and I couldn't help but smile all through the climax of the movie.

Stripped back but effective haunted house film that builds tension nicely without ever going over the top.

It has a few issues, notably an element of predictability and a mis-handled plotline/ending, but I can only imagine the negative reviewers expected something else, even though the synopsis is a pretty accurate desciption of what to expect.

If you're looking for something to turn all the lights off and get spooked by, without the usual dumb kids getting picked off one by one, then I'd recommend it,