Director: Emma Jean Sutherland
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Trying to jump-start her career, a big-city journalist is sent back to her home-town to cover their holiday festivities for the Christmas season, but when returning home sets off her past troubles with the holiday must put her feelings aside to save the town from a rampaging Satan Claus creature.
Review:
This was a fairly solid and enjoyable holiday effort. One of the finer features of this one is the effectively wholesome setup that manages to tie in a lot of traditional genre fun. The central setup of the woman returning to her home-town where she meets up with those that she knew earlier before leaving for a big--city career which includes a potential love interest, follows along with the the type of centralized theme that ties into the more popular genre setups alongside the various introductory pieces that are in place during this section. As these interactions focus on getting to know the charmingly zany locals who are given a large grace to look into their special storylines involving why she’s in the town, to begin with, there’s a charmingly fun storyline in place here to get this going along nicely.
That leads to a series of solid action scenes involving the creature running wild in the town. The attacks are really enjoyable, making use of the creatures’ supernatural powers and unique design to offer up some fun including the initial attack on the cameraman in his news van, the double attack on the bakers inside their shop, and the chaos that unfolds at the baking competition where the habit of utilizing the removed body parts in the attacks as decorations left behind at the scene to mix together some impressive work in that regard. With a campy attitude from the killer creature in the line delivery and overall execution of what’s going on as the silly-looking creature make-up fits the tone of this one incredibly well. These all manage to provide a lot to like here.
There are a few small factors here holding this one down. The main factor with this one is the overall lackluster and weak finale where it seems to run out of steam without much in the way of interest or coherence to how the whole thing comes together. The initial concept of how the whole thing is pulled off is bad enough being such a stupid concept on its own that it’s not remotely interesting to begin with, but then there’s the issue of it being introduced so awkwardly into the storyline that there’s little about it that makes sense how it’s supposed to work beyond saying so as the film’s running time has run out. That’s pretty much the main issue here, as the overall cheesiness and campy attitude of the whole thing makes for a genuinely fun spoof of the typical holiday family fare with the rest of the setup here providing everything needed to set up that factor, all of which hold this one down somewhat.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather fun holiday-based cheesy creature feature, there’s a lot more than expected to like here which holds it up as a rather fun cheesy genre effort with those few factors holding it back. Those who appreciate this kind of setup, are curious about the concept, or are fans of holiday horror films will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution with it.
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