Animatronic Santa's Are Coming To Town. You Better Watch Out.

Christmas Bloody Christmas

With a name like that how can you just scroll past? Well, my wife and I did, BUT we quickly went back and decided to give it a go. It's a good thing we did or we would have missed out on 86 minutes of bloody good fun. Pun intended. Definitely worth the price of admission- which was whatever the monthly subscription to Shudder is.

If you're looking for a fast-talking, non-family friendly, Christmas movie with witty banter, arguments about whether or not metal bands get worse when they cut their hair, or if horror film remakes are better than the originals- this may be the film for you. Oh, and there's blood. Gallons of the stuff.

The main character, Tori, played by Riley Dandy, who owns a rad video/record/comic shop (and prominently encourages people to "Shop Local" with a neon sign on display) opens the movie while she's closing up shop on Christmas Eve. Robbie, her employee, is casually talking her out of meeting up with some Tinder guy and convinces her to spend Christmas Eve with him, and lots of whiskey, instead. After throwing in the mandatory sex scenes, Tori witnesses the neighbors being visited, and bludgeoned, by a very bad Santa. An animatronic Santa who, at the beginning of the film, was said to have been recalled because the Christmas programming in them was reverting to their military origins. What ensues is nothing short of what you expect from a Christmas horror movie laced with neon lights and a mesmerizing snowscape. Tori spends the remainder of the film fighting for survival and saying roughly 450 "f-bombs" while acquiring more and more blood on her face.

Written and directed by Joe Begos (VFW, Bliss) you get the distinct impression that he wanted to make a remake of1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night by way of Terminator (with a little bit of Small Soldiers thrown in, in my opinion). After having the initial pitch rejected for straying too far from the original he kept moving forward with the concept and wrote the script for Christmas Bloody Christmas during The Pandemic™.

Overall, I definitely recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of the genre. There are a lot of great moments in the film, both cinematically and thematically, so even if you feel it's about 10 minutes too long- you'll still very much enjoy it.

7/10 Offbeats*

Watch the trailer here

*updated from 6/10 because I forgot that one part that I liked a lot.