Here at The Good, The Bad, and The Verdict we lean heavily towards the horror genre, although there are times we step away from it (see: Last Stop in Yuma County, Fist of the Condor). Oddly, four of the movies we screened this year were “holiday horrors” that involved either holiday-themed slashers or “killer Santas” which, actually, are pretty much the same thing as far as we’re concerned here.
Anyway, we decided to put together this “Holiday Horror’ Retrospective as a fun little year-end bonus. We dropped a line or two from each of the GBV sections for all four of this year’s applicable films to give a little snapshot of how each film landed for us. We’ve also included links to the full reviews so you can check them out where we go into more detail so you can get a better idea of whether or not each movie is worth a watch or if it deserves a lump of coal.
Santastein - August 13th
Synopsis
A holiday slasher about a young man that resurrects Santa after accidentally killing him years earlier, but who soon realizes that the creature he has raised is a bloodthirsty killer.
Nice
Joe: Unfortunately, I have nothing for this category regarding Santastein.
Mike: Some good ideas make appearances.
Naughty
Joe: The film offers only hoary chestnuts and tired tropes, and its characters are all stereotypical cliches that I found it impossible to get invested in.
Mike: As a comedy/horror one expects at least one of those to be present, but sadly Santastein does not deliver either in any type of method that works together.
Verdict
Joe: I can only recommend this movie to killer-Santa cinema completists
Mike: There’s already…R-rated (or its equivalent) “killer Santa” movies out there that are far superior to this...
As it currently is, I cannot recommend Santastein.
Werewolf Santa - August 31st
Down on her luck high-strangeness phenomena and cryptozoology YouTuber Lucy (Katherine Rodden) hunts for evidence of actual monsters, but only a few viewers follow her disappointing posts. Everything changes on Christmas Eve when she and her videographer Dustin (Charlie Preston) witness Santa getting bitten by a werewolf before he turns lycanthrope himself!
Nice
Joe: [Airell Anthony] Hayles takes a “low budget be damned” attitude — several outdoor locations help with that, and a ghost train sequence and strives for a fun Christmas horror comedy with Werewolf Santa.
Mike: As is typically the case, a low budget means the most efficient way to get the story on film is to do it as a found footage film, and that’s the case here. However, Hayles manages to avoid some of the expected found footage tropes and the ones that remain seem rather organic to the film. There’s also a bit of slickness to the film that, aside from the bouncy camerawork, doesn’t lend itself to looking like cheap camera footage.
Naughty
Joe: The low budget can’t be ignored at times…
Mike: …at one point [this] was called Frost Bites which I think is a much more clever title and I wish that they had stuck with that.
Verdict
Joe: Fans of well-made indie horror comedies that seek to entertain as much as possible despite their low budgets and aficionados of holiday horror comedies should put this one on their “Nice” lists.
Mike: If you can ignore the budgetary shortcomings that Hayles does an admirable - if occasionally curious - job of hiding, you should find this an enjoyable bit of Christmas fear.
Santa Isn’t Real - October 28th
Synopsis
After suffering a brutal attack on Christmas eve, a young woman, Nikki, struggles to convince her friends that the assailant was none other than Kris Kringle. When Santa returns to terrorize the group in their remote cabin the next Christmas, Nikki and her friends must overcome disbelief as they fight to stay alive.
Nice
Joe: Writer/director Zac Locke has a knack for suspense and pacing, doing nice work at the helm for a film that is technically sound
Mike: If you’ve never watched a slasher film and have yet to experience the thrill of correctly guessing who the killer is, then Santa Isn’t Real is a great place to start with its entry level difficulty in this department.
Naughty
Joe: There are clever twists in movies, and then there is overdoing it. Unfortunately, Santa Isn’t Real falls into the latter category for me.
Mike: Bringing absolutely nothing new to the table, Santa Isn’t Real wraps itself up in a garland of slasher tropes and presents one of the most predictable and trite films I’ve seen in quite a while.
Verdict
Joe: I would recommend this one only for Christmas-slasher and holiday-horror completists.
Mike: The shortcomings on display here can all be summed up by the line - when doing an info dump in the form of a monologue - the main character (Nikki), who has literally just woken up from a one year long coma, says “I’ve been doing research”.
It’s a Wonderful Knife - November 7th
Joe: Jane Widdop carries It’s a Wonderful Knife, and that’s a heavier burden than Santa’s overstuffed bag of toys could ever be. She’s a delight to watch.
Mike: It’s a Wonderful Knife takes the well known plot device from It’s a Wonderful Life and rolls it up with a slasher movie plot, delivering a clever spin on both its inspirational namesake and the genre it’s playing with.
Naughty
Joe: One of the most unoriginal films in recent memory. It’s more than mere homage. It’s even more than mere pastiche. It simply takes the plot of Frank Capra’s beloved 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life — name checking characters from that movie for good measure — and gives it a slasher movie element in modern times.
Mike: The biggest offense that this delivers is that it ignores its own rules (however tenuously they were presented), solely to provide an ending that is - quite arguably - the most predictable and weakest ending that Kennedy could have gone with.
Verdict
Joe: Rather than spending 90 minutes on It’s a Wonderful Knife, give It’s a Wonderful Life another watch if you have seen it before, or a first-time watch if you haven’t.
Mike: It’s a Wonderful Knife takes the tried and true story conceit of It’s a Wonderful Life and drops it over a slasher film landscape which results in a mostly enjoyable experience.