Directed by Robert Conway

Starring Monica Engesser, Amelia Haberman and James Ray

After just learning of its existence, a little girl’s belief in the ancient Christmas demon brings it to life and sets in on a rampage against anyone considered “naughty.”  

You better be good…

That was the thought I was telepathically asking the box cover before I put Krampus: The Reckoning in my DVD player.  It was one of those moments where you judge the movie based on the cover art and read the back of the box to see whether it’s worth watching or not.  This seems to be the year of scary holiday-themed movies and a good many of them are banking on whatever good will the theatrical release of Universal’s Krampus will generate because a Christmas demon killing bad people has surprisingly not been mined to death.  Against my better judgment, I inserted the disc half hoping it could turn out to be a surprisingly entertaining gorefest featuring a….sigh, cheap CGI Krampus.  Yeah it sucks.

The “you’re dead” look.

The film opens with a young foster girl named Zoe whose grandmother is telling her a story about the anti-Santa Claus, the Krampus, a creature that punishes the naughty people while Santa cheerfully breaks into people’s houses to give them presents.  Zoe is a hateful child and somehow wills the Krampus to life as an imaginary friend to kill her foster parents.  She’s put into a children’s hospital after the murders and is assigned Dr. Rachel Stewart, a child psychiatrist, to help her recover.  As Rachel looks into Zoe’s past, Zoe sends her friend after anyone who pisses her off.

My reaction after the movie.

There’s not a lot of positives about the movie and while I can harp about how much I didn’t care for the ridiculous plot, boring pace, lame acting, etc.  I didn’t exactly have high expectations for those aspects in the first place.  The movie is sold on the creature and it’s a laughable looking CG creature that could be called anything other than a “krampus” in another movie and get away with it.  Seriously, there is barely any Christmas imagery in the film, so you can replace the name and it won’t change the movie one bit.  Not to mention that the thing is controlled by the most hate-filled six-year old in history who gets the creature to burn people to a crisp who even look at her the wrong way.  In the spirit of the holidays, I’ll say something nice and that the gore effects were good but that is by no means any reason to watch this film.

Blarghblargh Merry Christmas blarghblargh

TL;DR

Story: 3 – Pissed off little girl has a Krampus as an imaginary friend and uses it to kill people she doesn’t like.

Blood: 4 – While the blurb on the back of the box would have you believe that the Krampus puts its victims through torturous agony, he just kind of burns them to a crisp in seconds.  Someone gets their heart ripped out in a bad dream.

Nudity: 6 – A sex scene followed by a shower scene early on lulls you into a false sense of security.

Overall: 2 – There are many entertaining holiday horror films I can recommend to you but this is an easy recommendation to avoid.  Or gift to someone you don’t like.

Trivia

-How many Krampus films are there?  Probably more than you would expect!