¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016
Candidate #8
KRAMPUS
(November 2015)
"Twisted fairy tale horsesh!t!"
I've talked about this ‘round
these parts before, that it’s always a good thing to have go-to holiday movies.
And
while there are certain go-to Christmas titles (like Go or Tokyo Godfathers),
there aren’t as many go-to Christmas horror
titles, except, say, Gremlins, and--but
this is a stretch, as far as the horror part is concerned--The Nightmare Before Christmas.
So,
thank sweet baby Jeebus for Michael Dougherty’s Krampus!
Right
from the slo-mo Mucho Mart opening sequence (orchestrated to Bing Crosby’s “It’s
Beginning to Look Like Christmas”), Krampus
is a holiday horror delight, as Max (Emjay Anthony) inadvertently calls
down the “shadow of Saint Nicholas,” the titular Krampus, who comes “… not to
reward, but to punish.”
After
giving us the ¡Qué horror!
2010 title, Trick ‘r Treat--which is,
as indicated by its title, all about Halloween horror--Dougherty takes very
nearly the same general approach, but this time, tipping his horror hat to Christmas, and focusing on a single story.
And
while titles like Sheitan and À l'intérieur (Inside) and Calvaire
all sport Christmas-set horrors, they’re also definitely not my idea of “fun” holiday horror viewing.
Krampus is.*
And
really, how can you resist a movie that has a dog named Thor playing one named
Rosie?
“Yeah, but Ben Kuklinski
is always ragging on Christmas. He even told the first graders that Santa was
just a cheap marketing ploy invented to sell Pepsi.”
“Coke.”
“You know what I mean.”
“But not why you care.”
“Well, someone’s gotta…”
*
Having labeled it “‘fun’ holiday horror viewing,” I feel though that I should
point out that this one still gets pretty
dark in a number of strategic places…
(Krampus OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
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