Sleep Deprieved Movie Review: Krampus (2015)

Hello All,

So having to wake up way early today after only three hours of sleep, I loaded myself up with enough caffeine to the point where I basically still can’t eat without risking being sick. I apologize for that image but I’m still kind of out of it, but I can pretty much guarantee you that this review is me in my 100% mindset. I was wide awake when I saw this and the thoughts in my head are still there.

    Continuing on with the new Christmas movies for this year, we have a rare entry into the mix, a Horror-Comedy-Christmas movie. Now there are a few entries into the horror christmas genre, but even rarer is a mix of the three, the most well known one I think being Gremlins. So how did this newest entry do? Let’s find out together shall we?

Plot Summary - Three Days before Christmas, a family comes together to celebrate the holidays. The family has lost it’s Christmas spirit, except for Max (Emjay Anthony) who still believes in the season, until an argument with his cousins causes him to lose his faith and tear up his letter to Santa and throw it away. When a dark and stormy blizzard blacks out the whole city, and his sister goes missing, his grandma Omi (Krista Stadler) reveals that Santa has not come to visit them, but instead, his evil shadow Krampus.

Pros - I love a lot of things about this movie. Right off the bat I love the look of Krampus and his minions in the film as they are insanely awesome. It’s a mix of older style christmas clothes and monsters mixed with modern looking christmas decorations and evil toys as well. The story is really well told, and the film manages to keep a really nice and tense atmosphere around, while balancing it out with comedic moments and even some heartfelt family bonding moments. It even manages to throw in one of the best endings I’ve seen for a horror movie in a really long time. The cast is really awesome, and they each feel like a truly unique character in this story. You get to learn and grow with the family as they go through everything.

Cons - Even though it’s an extremely atmospheric film, it is lacking on horror. While it does have a few wtf moments and it doesn’t play it safe in the order of who goes first, overall it’s feels lacking in the sense that it never really had me truly frightened. I get it’s hard to mix three genres into one and while I like the end result, I felt it could’ve have been stronger in the actual horror of it all.

Final Score - 9/10

Another easy recommendation, this might be my favorite christmas movie for this year so far. This and Night Before I will definitely try and watch every year I can though.

Creed will be tomorrow, showtimes got shifted around and it got bumped back a few hours and I wanted to get home in case I crashed early.

Until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.