Movie Review: A Christmas Horror Story

With anthologies really starting to rise in popularity once again, it is great to see the most wonderful time of the year get an anthology that is gory, scary and bloody good fun. A Christmas Horror Story delivers four Christmas themed stories, that all offer up something different.

The four stories (Santa tackling undead/possessed Elves, A Krampus punishes a terrible family, a changeling story and a story about teens poking about where they shouldn’t) are all intercut with each other – being wrapped around both the town of Bailey Downs and it’s local radio host (William Shatner) seeing in Christmas for another year. This method at first kind of throws you off because it is not the ‘traditional’ way an anthology film is framed, for some stories it really works, for others it breaks some of the atmosphere but overall it works.

As with all anthologies some of the stories were better – all of them are directed very well – than others but this will be depending on your own tastes. I quite enjoyed all of them, my favourite being the story about Santa fighting the Elves which was so out of step with the rest of the film I was thinking ‘what the hell?’ when the twist hit and it honestly shocked me because I wasn’t expecting it at all and it instantly became the favourite and possibly will be talked about as one of the great anthology moments.

The acting (for the most part) through all the stories is pretty good even William Shatner’s radio studio bits are fun. However the standout actor for me was George Buza who played the most bad-assed Santa…ever, it was such a fun character to watch and Buza was just excellent. Apart from the acting adding to the stories, the music and sound played a large role in that as well. From foreboding score moments to some beastly growls, it all worked together.

The film gave off that Creepshow vibe which I loved, really taking the audience on an enjoyable and entertaining ride. To me it is the kind of film that anthologies should be – giving you bite sized pieces of horror wrapped together so that you can get your teeth into it. A Christmas Horror Story gives the audiences some great presents and it’s a film to look forward to.

A Christmas Horror Story premieres on July 20 at Fantasia International Film Festival.

Release date (theatrical & VOD) is October 2 2015

Ryan Morrissey-Smith

Twitter: @TigersMS78