It’s tough to blame anyone for not knowing just what to expect from Krampus. The film’s marketing campaign has been confusing, to say the least. It’s a horror movie! It’s a Christmas family comedy! It’s both! Some even had high hopes for Krampus to be the next Gremlins – a fun, occasionally creepy but mostly campy parody of the formulaic horror genre. That’s not a bad assumption to make, given the presence in the cast of skilled TV comedians such as Adam Scott (oddly scoring top billing over Oscar nominee Toni Collette) and David Koechner. Somewhat depressingly, however, actually sitting down and watching Krampus is unlikely to make things very much clearer. The film careens haphazardly from horror to comedy and back again (or not), sacrificing pretty much everything along the way: laughs, scares, tension and stakes.
Workaholic Tom (Scott) and uptight Sarah (Collette) are readying their house and home for the annual holiday descent of family members they’d much rather avoid. These include Sarah’s sister, Linda (Allison Tolman), and brother-in-law Howard (Koechner); as well as their brood of four kids and hard-drinking Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell). Unfortunately, the visitors don’t play well with the young master of the house, Max (Emjay Anthony) – the precocious little boy who still half-believes in Santa Claus. Disillusioned by his family’s bickering, Max makes a wish that draws upon his house an evil spirit (and his Christmassy minions) – the very anti-thesis of the considerably more benign Santa Claus – that comes straight out of Germanic folklore and the nightmares of Omi (Krista Stadler), Max’s grandmother.
Right from the outset, Krampus establishes an almost dour tone that makes it tough for writer-director Michael Dougherty to effectively dial up the comedy later on. There’s nothing faintly funny, for instance, about the family dynamics that play out over the dinner table. Insults are hurled, people are bullied, terrible things are said. The few weak gags Dougherty conjures up at this point involve Max’s cousins: a kid who stares intensely at people without saying a word, and two tomboys who still behave like giggly mean girls. When Krampus’ minions arrive, dragging chaos, a blizzard and hellfire in their wake, everything is played without a single hint of irony. We’re meant to be scared, even though it’s hard to conjure up much creepy tension around a jack-in-the-box and clumpy, magical snowmen. Later on, the film gets weird(er) – presumably, when cackling gingerbread men and demonic teddy bears turn up, the audience is meant to howl… with laughter. But Krampus is such an odd hodge-podge of tones and ideas that it’s hard to know when and how to engage with everything that happens onscreen.
It doesn’t help that the creature part of this feature isn’t particularly coherent. The mish-mash of monsters that plague Max’s family flit between dark and broody, to bright and giggly. The special effects are decent, especially when it comes to rendering toothsome clowns and flaming cookies. But the horrors themselves contribute to the see-sawing, confusing aspect of the piece: are we supposed to take the clown seriously? Or laugh because of how patently silly it is? Are Krampus’ elves meant to be terrifying or ridiculous? Pondering such questions leads to others, such as: can a Christmas movie ever really kill off all its characters? The answer to this final question nags throughout the film, prompting more cynical audience members to disengage from the characters and their final fates.
That’s not to say Krampus is entirely without merit. Actually, Dougherty has a few excellent ideas struggling to break free from the rather shapeless mess that constitutes much of the film. His opening sequence is a sharp, satirical burst of mayhem set to Bing Crosby’s It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas – suggesting, with dry wit, that we are the real monsters who have blithely forgotten the true meaning of the holiday season. There’s a completely bonkers scene set in the attic – featuring three adults, an axe, toys come to life and a lot of screaming – that comes closest to nailing the oddball vibe that was sorely missing from a great deal of the film. Also, there lies nestled within Krampus an absolutely delightful gem of an animated sequence, gorgeously designed and rendered in claymation to tell of Omi’s firsthand encounter with Krampus as a child. It almost – operative word: almost – makes up for the film’s frustrating cop-out ending.
Krampus also benefits from a cast of actors who are completely and utterly committed to all the different stories they’ve been tasked to tell. Each one of them, from Scott to Stadler, plays his or her role in deadly earnest. Indeed, anyone looking to hire an actor who never phones it in need look no further than Collette. Bless her heart – even when screaming her face off while being attacked by a creepy angel doll, she performs what’s required of her with a verve and depth that the script and her underbaked character don’t really deserve.
Perhaps it’s unfair to wish that Krampus had been better able to blend its myriad ideas, themes and tones into a coherent whole. After all, the zany, off-kilter, campy comedy of Gremlins is a fragile thing: too much and it will grate, too little and it falls flat. Nonetheless, the handful of times Dougherty manages to skate that fine line suggests that a cannier script and a more experienced director might have more effectively mined both the humour and horror in Krampus.
Basically: Some good moments, but this is primarily a tonally inconsistent mess that winds up being neither funny nor scary.
shawneofthedead 