Krampus Review

There is a Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore character called Krampus, a horned, anthropomorphic figure who punishes children who have misbehaved during the Christmas season, in contrast with Saint Nicholas who rewards the well-behaved with gifts. Frankly, I'm surprised this demonic folklore figure hasn't been used as a horror movie villain before now. Krampus (2015) features an ironic take on Christmas in general, features B-movie camp, and disappointingly little Krampus.

While the holiday season represents the most magical time of year, ancient European folklore warns of Krampus, a horned beast who punishes naughty children at Christmas time. When dysfunctional family squabbling causes young Max (Emjay Anthony) to lose his festive spirit, it unleashes the wrath of the fearsome demon. As Krampus lays siege to the Engel home, mom (Toni Collette), dad (Adam Scott), sister (Stefania LaVie Owen) and brother must band together with their dreadful visiting relatives to save one another from a monstrous fate.

So, it seems that the Krampus character has popped up increasingly in pop culture, including the Christmas episode of the American Dad TV series in season 9, where I first heard about it. When we hear about Krampus in the movie, he is referred to as "The shadow of Saint Nicholas." It seems to represent the bad qualities of Christmas that many people are becoming cynical about these days. This cynisism was beautifully Krampus starts with Bing Crosby singing "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Chrismas" while we see Black Friday shoppers trample store employees. beat each other up over merchandise, kids getting into fistfights in the middle of Christmas pageants, stressed housewives trying to make elaborate dinners, huge messes of holiday wrapping paper. This ironic opening scene was just beautiful; it captured the essence of the unpleasantness that Christmas can bring when we become materialistic, mindless consumers, and spiteful towards other people and family members during a season that claims to be about love, sharing, and kindness. It's this sort of attitude in part that draws the attention of Krampus.

I had really hoped the movie would go on to explore this lack of Christmas Spirit during the Christmas season, but it dosen't delve into it nearly as much as it had potential to. So many Christmas movies and TV specials try to sell "The True Meaning of Christmas" by having some grouchy Scrooge character or busy professional have a sweet change of heart and learn to love or some scientifically inclined intellectual experience the "magic" of the Christmas season and suddenly believe in Santa Clause or some such tripe. Here I was hoping to see Krampus terrorize people into a state of humility and gratitude that forced them to understand the love, personal sacrifice, and kindness that they claim they have but obviously didn't. There was tons of potential to do an ironic and scary "True Meaning of Christmas" thing. It started out that way, but quickly devolved into a Christmas themed home-invasion horror story with very little Krampus.

Krampus has hoards of ironic Christmas themed minions that he keeps sending into the house to abduct and terrorize the Engel family and their houseguests. There are killer Gingerbread men, a many-toothed teddy bear, a creepy angel, and a monstrous worm-like creature inside of a jack-in-the-box clown, to name a few. It's a more mature juxtaposition of Christmas and Halloween than was used in The Nightmare Before Christmas. The family ends up fighting off these creatures repeatedly; Krampus doesn't really appear until near the end. He's the titular character and we see a disappointing lack of this him. He's not really even a presence until the end. By that point he had hardly been established as a central villain and we didn't have a whole lot of reason to be afraid of Krampus specifically other than he looked kind of creepy.

With all the Christmas irony crammed into Krampus, it can be considered a horror/comedy. There's quite a bit of irony playing on Christmas special tropes, but that dies off rather early on. There's still humorous gems of dialogue strewn throughout the script. The relatives that come to visit Engel home are akin to the Cousin Eddie's family in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with none of the charm. Angry with his hosts, Uncle Howard complains to his wife, "We should have gone to stay with my brother!" "Your brother lives in a barn!" she says. "Jesus was born in a barn!" Later "I just got my ass kicked by a bunch of Christmas cookies!" proclaims Howard after one of the more comical attack scenes. Some eerie remixes of ordinarily cheery Christmas songs make their way into the background during action scenes which add to the surrealism and irony of the scenes.

The horror bits were kind of fun and creepy, but it feels like the movie held back a lot on the violence. When there is an opportunity for gore, it mostly happens off screen. The monsters are kind of scary and creepy, but not terribly grotesque. There are a number of scenes when it sounds like the characters are about to drop an F-bomb, but are either interupted or the dialogue sounds similar but is obscured with loud sound effects in hopes that audiences wouldn't notice there was a lack of profanity. This is all fine and dandy, but seems to be a watered down version of what the movie had in mind. The movie stays safely within its PG-13 rating, it just seems like the movie is holding itself back, which ultimately weakens what the movie was aiming for. It's as if it's trying to be really scary without letting itself be properly frightening.

Krampus is an ironic and down-to-earth spin on the normally whimsical and saccharine sweet Christmas movies and TV specials that we are bombarded with around this time of year. It's got funny bits, but the horror aspect takes center stage more often than not. There's funny dialogue, B-movie horror schlock, and doesn't get preachy about what it thinks you should think about Christmas. There is little interaction with the movie's titular monster, which is a big letdown, and it doesn't explore the potential for commenting on how awful some people are around the holiday. It feels restrained and didn't allow itself to do all it wanted to do, which keeps it from its full potential. It starts out strong, but has a weak, vague, and disappointing conclusion. It's almost like Gremlins meets National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but isn't nearly as good as either one. I can't recommend seeing this in theaters; it's just not worth the price of a movie ticket. If it does sound interesting enough for you to want to see, I'd wait to rent it from RedBox or something.

Are there other obscure mythological figures associated with holidays that you'd like to see star in a creature feature? Comment below to tell me all about it!

Fright Night

After feeling betrayed by Hollywood with their recent array of rubbish vampire movies, I wasn’t excited to see Fright Night (2011), a remake of a 1985 vampire horror movie by the same name. That is until I heard The Doctor David Tennant was in it. It instantly became a much higher priority. I don’t typically care for horror movies, but this one was actually really good!

High School senior Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally has it all; he’s running with the popular crowd and dating the hottest girl in school, Amy (Imogen Poots). He’s become so cool he’s begun avoiding his old friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Trouble arrives when an intriguing character named Jerry (Collin Farrell) moves in next door to Charlie. Jerry seems like a great guy at first, but there’s something not quite right about him, and only Ed and Charlie seem to notice. After witnessing some very strange activity, Charlie comes to an unmistakable conclusion: Jerry is a vampire preying on the neighborhood. Unable to convince anyone of the truth, Charlie has to find a way to get rid of the monster himself, even if that means enlisting the aid of a truly bizarre Las Vegas occult magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant).

One of the early scenes in Fright Night had a very paranoid Ed trying to convince Charlie that Jerry is a vampire. Charlie accuses Ed of reading too much Twilight. Reasonably so, Ed is offended by this, and argues that Twilight vampires are make-believe and really stupid. Not only was this hilarious, but it was communicating to the audience that the vampire in this film is not going to be the pansy, sparkly variety who knows what you’re feeling and wants to take you to the prom. THIS vampire is the way vampires are supposed to be: undead, demonic monsters from hell, bent of draining the life force of the innocent to sustain their existence as one of the damned. With all the romanticized and sexualized vampire movies, TV shows, and literature that has emerged in recent years, having a truly frightening monster out for blood was oddly quite refreshing! Besides, anything that makes fun of Twilight is good in my book.

I also have to give credit to a film that causes me to withdraw previous statements. I’ve said that horror and comedy are thematically at odds with each other and don’t fit well in the same movie together. Fright Night was a comedy horror movie, and it was a hoot! They argue that “Jerry” is a terrible name for a vampire, they complain about the quality of vampire hunting gear won on eBay, and Charlie’s mother (Toni Collette) makes references to the 1960’s TV show Dark Shadows.

Fight Night does horror really well, too. Since movies like Saw came out, the horror genre has degenerated from stories that induce feelings of horror and terror to stories that simply gross out the audience. There’s a big difference; getting a buzz saw blade lodged in your face is gross, holding your breath to try and remain undetected by a monster in its own lair is scary. There are scenes in Fright Night that filled me with dread while other scenes had me laughing.

Teens are the target audience for this movie. Most teen horror flicks feature characters that are intent on having sex, partying, experimenting with drugs, and underage drinking and the like. Fright Night was curiously much more conservative. The story focuses more on Charley’s changing relationship with Ed, rather than on Charley’s sexual interest in his girlfriend. On top of that, Charlie is trying to protect his single mother from making bad choices with bad boy next door. Charlie even becomes less interested in sex the more time he spends hunting down Jerry. The movie isn’t about sexual conquests of the adolescent male; it’s about Charlie making conscious choices to protect the women in his life from the “bad boys” out there. I don’t see this kind of thing in movies aimed at teens very often, it was a pleasant change of pace.

Fright Night is fairly clean for a horror movie. Since it’s a vampire movie, we get to see an abundance of blood splatter, but we don’t see much disembowelment and such. There’s some immodesty, but no full on nudity. There’s quite a bit of profanity, though, especially after the comically bitter and sarcastic Peter Vincent shows up. I didn’t care for that, but it fit into the character well, so I can’t really fault the movie for it.

Fright Night was a really fun comedy-horror movie, and the best contemporary vampire movie I’ve seen in years. It was fun, it had some good writing and directing, excellent actors, it was funny and scary, and had some great special effects and cinematography. Best of all, there are actual vampires in this vampire movie; it shows us, in a fresh and interesting way, the traditional vampires that people with any taste will know and love. Fright Night is worth seeing. I don’t even like horror movies that much and I enjoyed it enough to want a copy on Blu-Ray. Some content (such as the profanity) won’t settle well with some viewers, so be conscientious of that before seeing it.

What is your favorite Comedy-Horror movie? Why did you like it so much? Comment below and tell me all about it!

Little Miss Sunshine Movie Review

Comedy-drama movies are an odd thing. They juxtapose contrasting moods that ultimately form a story during which we can both laugh and cry. I’m sure that is an insanely difficult thing to pull off well. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) did it perfectly. I honestly can’t imagine a better film that is full of honest emotional drama and laughable situations.

In Albuquerque, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) brings her suicidal brother Frank (Steve Carell) home to the care of her dysfunctional and bankrupt family. Sheryl’s husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is unsuccessfully trying to sell his nine-step self-help and self-improvement technique to reach success. Her son Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence as a follower of Nietzsche and aims to be a jet pilot. Dwayne’s grandfather Edwin (Alan Arkin) was kicked out of a retirement home for heroin addiction. When Sheryl’s seven-year-old daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) has a chance to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, California, the whole family travels together in their old Volkswagen Type 2 microbus. The Hoover family deals with every imaginable obstacle a road trip can have as well as escalating conflicts with one another as they try to give Olive every chance she can get to reach her dream.

The thing that stands out most to me in this movie is the acting. The performances are full of remarkable subtleties. The actors (and of course, the writer Michael Arndt) really grasp how unspoken reactions can be funnier than witty comebacks or sarcastic dialogue. It demonstrates also that pain and conflict can be the source of some of the funniest material. For example, Dwayne’s eyes frequently portray a bleak, dead outlook on life and the character is full of teenage angst and disgust. In reaction to his family’s antics, he just tilts his head in an almost imperceptible way to get us to crack up.

After the initial individual character introductions, there is a brilliant scene of the family dinner. This serves to develop the dynamics between the characters. The dialogue feels so natural here and we get a clearer understanding of how the family views one another and what kind of conflicts there are between family members. All the characters are so well developed that you can’t help but empathize with them and their losses and successes.

There is genuinely funny comedy in this movie. I was cracking up throughout the movie. But the funny moments come and go, and in their place is some very real drama. I felt bad when Olive cries for fear of being a loser and potentially losing her father’s love and respect. I felt uneasy when Frank’s academic rival appears at the same gas station, causing to resurface the feelings and thoughts that drove him to attempt suicide. I empathized with Sheryl who is at her wits end trying to keep the family together and happy. You will laugh and cry in this movie, and these two contrasting emotions the movie tries to elicit don’t detract from each other. It is excellent writing!

The Hoover family encounters just about every problem they can on a road trip. One of the earliest problems is after their first stop; they can’t get the VW bus to start again. The aging van’s clutch breaks. Since the van is so old and obsolete, the part must be special ordered which will take up to two weeks. Richard is unwilling to give up, and they take the advice of the mechanic; they push the van until they reach 20 miles per hour and start the engine in third gear. This means they avoid stopping unless absolutely necessary and that it takes a group effort to get the bus moving. Not only is this a hilarious running gag that is used in very creative ways, but it also represents the family needing to work together to keep the family moving and reach their goals.

I simply adore the overall theme of the movie. It is through pain and suffering that we learn and grow the most. The movie is about ideals and dreams versus illusions and reality. The beauty pageant in particular shows us thematically how ridiculous and subjective ideals are. The Hoovers are a family that suffers though trials together, refuses to give up, and decides to do what they like, in spite of what the world dictates is best.

Little Miss Sunshine is “rated R for language, some sex and drug content.” There really isn’t any sex in this movie; we just see the covers of some of grandpa’s porn magazines. We also see grandpa snorting heroin once or twice. I didn’t think it was worth getting offended by them. Language is pretty prominent, though. I do not like profanity, but there are situations in real life that are so intense that nothing can beat a well placed F-bomb. Little Miss Sunshine is full of situations like these. I don’t like how much profanity is in the movie, but it is meaningfully implemented. Anger, rage, and frustration become so intense that saying “gosh darn it” would just sound incredibly stupid.

Little Miss Sunshine is a beautiful movie that is very well written, remarkably well acted, and skillfully directed. There are reasons it won academy awards for best original screenplay. Even the cinematography and color palette are eye-catching. If you can tolerate the profanity, I highly recommend seeing this movie. It’s humbling and dramatic, but still hilarious and funny. I’ve got a copy sitting on my movie shelf along with other favorites.

What is a dramatic comedy, or “dramedy” movie that you really enjoyed? Do you have a favorite? Comment below and tell me why!