Mark Reviews Movies: CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS

Christmas Bloody Christmas, RLJE Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 8, 2022

In Christmas Bloody Christmas, a robotic Santa Claus goes haywire and starts killing anyone it can find. It's probably better to say that a robotic Santa starts killing anyone in its path eventually, because there's a lot of random build-up before the repetitive carnage begins.

It might seem odd to say it, but writer/director Joe Begos' movie might be better as a random series of scenes of characters discussing and arguing—music and movies and whether or not a friendship could or should become something else—than it is a horror movie. This isn't particularly engaging in either mode, but at least there's a bit of surprise and authenticity in the movie's early scenes—no matter how completely unrelated to the real point they actually are.

We meet Tori (Riley Dandy), the owner of an independent record store in some anonymous small town, and her friend/employee Robbie (Sam Delich), who clearly holds a torch for his pal/boss. It's Christmas Eve, and as the regulars—including Jay (Jonah Ray Rodrigues), the boyfriend of toy store owner Lahna (Dora Madison) who's looking for a last-minute gift for her—file out for their holiday plans, the two get ready for their own.

Tori has an online date set up with a guy, but Robbie wants her to join him for a drink or two or as many as they can handle at the local bar instead. The two bicker in the way that predictably inevitable couples do in such a situation. If not for the title and a briefly overheard news story about a robotic Santa being recalled for some terrible malfunction, one might almost be convinced that the entire story will just be about this pair playfully insulting each other, arguing controversial opinions about music and movies, questioning each other's tastes, and gradually figuring out that there might be some legitimate sexual tension beneath all of this talk.

Dandy and Delich are convincing enough in their seemingly improvised or naturally performed bits of argumentation, which spans the pretty narrow cultural terrain of heavy metal and '90s alternative music, as well as holiday-themed and horror movies (Tori's affection for certain sequels in the latter genre is certainly worthy of some questioning, so either Dandy or Begos is being pretty honest here). It's easy enough to buy that the conversation, in addition to the low-key flirting happening beneath the talk, is sincere, but a little of this makes the whole point of the characters, the dynamic, and the delaying tactic clear.

We get a lot of it, even after the robotic Santa (Abraham Benrubi) in the toy store gains awareness, finds an axe, and starts tracking down the very loud future victims going at it in the shop (An introductory string of commercials features one for the cyborg Santa, which lets us know it's manufactured of "military-grade" hardware). Begos uses a lot of POV shots to establish the stalking Santa, but as the shaky camera wanders up and down the aisles, this essential mode of the plot feels as if it's doing some delaying of its own.

Once the killing—still eventually, because there's still the matter of Tori and Robbie's relationship to answer back at her house—starts, the movie doesn't let up on the attempted suspense or the bloody violence. That means introducing a bunch of extraneous characters—from the toy store folks, to some of Tori's relatives, to a bunch of incompetent cops, to a random family of neighbors (Begos doesn't adhere to the typical rule that kids are safe in a horror movie, which might be daring if this movie displayed any kind imagination to back up the provocation). They're hacked, bludgeoned, smashed, shot, bifurcated, or decapitated by the killer Kris Kringle bot.

It also means plenty of slow motion, a lot of waiting for Santa to show up, and the utterly predictable gag of a seemingly destroyed robot rising from its defeated position to come at the potential victims some more. Begos re-uses that move over and over again, recycles the whole pattern of the stalking and the payoffs of how people are slaughtered, and rehashes ideas and images from at least one other film about a killer robot relentlessly hunting a woman in order to terminate her (The climax, which begins to feel endless, is either an homage or a rip-off of the climax of that film, depending on how generous one is feeling). The major shock of Christmas Bloody Christmas is that it's less dull when the movie is delaying the inevitable, predictable dullness of its horror story.

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