Krampus (dir. Michael Dougherty, 2015)
It is a miserable Engel family Christmas. Tom and Sarah (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) are standard unhappy, upper middle class liberals having to tolerate her alcoholic aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), her sister Linda (Alison Tolman) and her stereotypical conservative husband Howard (David Koechner). The children aren’t faring much better. Linda and Howard’s brood have to deal with that whole mess. Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) wants to spend time with her boyfriend instead of her awful family. Max (Emjay Anthony) justs wants Christmas to be like it used to be when he was a kid like two years ago. To make matters worse, Tom’s Austrian mother Omi (Krista Stadler) is very on edge this holiday season.
You know, because of the Krampus. What? Is that a spoiler? Come on, it’s the title!
The movie is fine, I guess? The political commentary did not work in 2015, and it definitely does not work now. The Krampus, everyone’s favorite Yuletide folkloric monster, takes an admirable amount of time before showing up. Until then, however, you are stuck with killer gingerbread men and toys. It’s better done here than in a Full Moon Productions movie, but I was still reminded constantly about their whole line of horror movies featuring magically animated inanimate objects slaughtering people, which I did not need at all rather than at a slightly higher budget. I like many of the actors involved–and I really need to rewatch the first season of Fargo at some point–but there’s just not a lot here for them to do that’s either funny or dramatically interesting.
oliveresque 