Every holiday a string of movies always comes along to capitalize on the current holiday buzz, make a few bucks, and disappear. Usually lame cash grabs that are mostly forgettable, I feared Krampus would fall under the same fate. Horrible trailers featuring lame looking effects and a premise that seemed to blend horror, comedy, and christmas with utter failure, I had no reason to think this movie would be noteworthy in the slightest. Keeping my christmas faith I held hope for this movie, and it seemed Santa had delivered.

Krampus written and directed by Micheal Dougherty, ironically whose only other film consists of Trick R Treat, a holiday based film that blended comedy and horror to a mediocre degree. Comes Krampus, a holiday based film that blends comedy and horror to a slightly better degree. The story follows Max (Emjay Anthony), a 13 year old kid who loses his Christmas spirit when his redneck (and i do emphasize redneck as that’s what most of the jokes end up focusing on) family visits for the holiday and embarrasses him at dinner by reading his letter to Santa out loud. Max distraught and angry at the world, rips up his letter Santa followed immediately by dark clouds covering the sky and summoning the titular Krampus to his neighborhood.

The movies plot never really gets any more complicated and the film basically derides into scene after scene of Christmas themed monster attacks with jokes poking fun at his redneck cousins peppered in between.

Krampus set out to do two things. Make people laugh and make people scared. The humor works perfectly well though never diversifies beyond “rednecks are stupid” while the horror ended up being more stressful than scary as the whole film the entire cast is put in such a awful and desperate situation, punctuated by the fact that it’s family members getting picked off one by one and not some random teenage friend.

Really what set this movie apart for me was the fantastic monster designs. A sucker for practical effects I completely lost it at the reveal of Krampus who surprisingly doesn’t even make an appearance until the final act. Instead we’re treated to an ensemble of killer Christmas toys such as jack in the box’s and killer teddy bears. Something else that helped elevate this movie beyond typical holiday cash ins was that it was just plain and simple fun. I held a constant grin on my face throughout the entirety of the movie with it only dropping towards the end when things get really intense. There’s nothing actually wrong with the film except that it’s overall quality just never crosses the realm of greatness. At the end it’s just a really good movie I highly recommend