So then, we are finally here, the last door of our advent calendar and the final chapter in this history of the evolution of the Christmas horror movie. And indeed 2015 was the year that everything changed, and after this Christmas, no more would we have fallow years devoid of festive fright flicks and Yuletide chillers. Indeed from 2015, every year would bring new Christmas horror movies, and in increasing numbers. So what changed? Well, let’s look at the two Christmas movies released this year and find out…
First out of the tinsel garlanded gate was A Christmas Horror Story. This Canadian movie, released on 23rd October 2015, was the brainchild of three directors Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, and Brett Sullivan, all of who had worked previously on the Ginger Snaps trilogy of movies. What brought them together was the desire to make a Christmas anthology movie, something very much in the vein of the old Amicus movies and Creepshow. They wanted to tell a selection of tales that would be fun, festive and frightening but with a modern twist. And so we have five tales told in A Christmas Horror Story, and without letting any spoilers out of the sack, I can tell you the following…
We open on Christmas Eve, and our first stop is the North Pole and Santa’s workshop. It is a busy time but there is something amiss, and one of the elves is getting sick. We then move to the little town of Bailey Downs, where DJ Dangerous Dan, played by William Shatner, is manning the decks and taking the listeners through Christmas Eve to the big day. We learn that the previous Christmas there had been a terrible tragedy in the town - two high school students were slain by a mystery assailant. However at the school, three students, Molly, Dylan and Ben, have snuck in to make a documentary about the crime, and have got hold of a key to the basements where it happened.
Meanwhile across town Scott Peters and his wife Kim, and their young son, Will are out to get a Christmas tree. But Scott, a cop who should know better, leads them to a fenced off woodland marked ‘no trespassing’. They get a fine tree from there, but of course, there will be a price to pay. Finally also out and about are the Bauer family, who are going to visit their Aunt Edda, a rich old lady of German descent, who lives out of town in a country mansion. However their elderly relative isn't particularly welcoming, nor feeling very festive, as tonight is Krampusnacht…
Now what makes A Christmas Horror Story stand out from the pack is that rather than use the traditional format of an anthology film - basically a wraparound tale and then telling one story at a time - instead they opted to weave the stories together so they run concurrently. And while some reviewers stated they would have preferred the usual anthology format, in this case weaving the stories together works very well. To begin with it’s refreshingly different, but also there are many links between the stories which ties them together in a satisfying way, and what's more they are all playing out concurrently on the same night, a Christmas Eve where dark forces are abroad.
As mentioned, our trio of directors were aiming for fun, festive and frightening, and A Christmas Horror Story does deliver on all three fronts. You have a nice range of different sorts of horror here - there’s creepy ghostliness, there’s a decent amount of the red stuff spilled in over-the-top kills, and a large helping of the old darker side of Yuletide for folklore fans. Plus it is quite fun too, with William Shatner’s increasingly sozzled DJ being a highlight. And I can assure you that the poster does not lie either - we do get to see Santa Claus go toe-to-toe with a very impressive Krampus.
It’s all done with a terrific sense of fun, with a love of both the genre and the season apparent, and the whole delicious feast is served with a liberal sprinkling of humour just like Creepshow (1982), Tales From the Crypt (1972) and the old EC comics that inspired both. When it was first released, it was, I fear, somewhat overshadowed by the other Yuletide horror movie that came out that year, but A Christmas Horror Story certainly found an audience on disc and streaming platforms. Seemingly it reappears on one of the big streamers in time for Christmas every year. And this too has become an annual favourite here at Hypnogoria Towers.
But of course A Christmas Horror Story wasn’t the only festive fright flick out in 2015, for released on 4th December was Krampus! I mean, a movie named Krampus, not the actual mythological being. Now this serving of festive frights was dreamed up by director Michael Dougherty, who previously had given us another seasonal horror, the Hallowe’en themed anthology Trick R Treat (2007) which quickly became a cult favourite for lovers of the spookiest night of the year.
Now this Yuletide movie’s genesis was Dougherty seeing old postcards of Krampus, back when tales of this dark Germanic Christmas visitor began circulating online. And so, with writers Zach Shields and Todd Casey, the movie Krampus was born, and the plot goes like this…
The Engel family is preparing for Christmas, but the Yuletide spirit seems to be in short supply. Young son Max, played by Emjay Anthony, has gotten in top fight at the school nativity recital, older sister Beth, played by Stefania LaVie Owen, is hitting full-on teenager mode, while Dad Tom, played Adam Scott is distracted by work, while Mom Sarah, played by Toni Collette is increasingly stressed trying to get everything ready for the big day.
And what is souring the season for everyone is the prospect of Sarah’s sister, Linda, played by Allison Tolamn, and her family coming to stay. Her husband Howard, played by David Koechner, is a somewhat unrefined gun-nut, who is very much raising his two daughters, Steve and Jordan, to have his love of trucks and hunting. And also in tow, in Aunt Dorothy, played by Conchata Ferrell, who is somewhat abrasive to say the least and can be relied upon to drain any bottle of festive spirits nearby. The only calm spot in this storm of family relationships, is Omi, played by Krista Stadler, Max’s elderly German grandmother, a lady who knows the importance of not losing one’s Christmas spirit.
However after an extremely fractious family dinner, Max, in a fit of rage and despair, tears up his letter to Santa Claus, and hurls it out of the window. But a strange wind seems to pick up the pieces and whirl them away. Soon a blizzard hits the neighbourhood, and Krampus is coming…
With a gifted cast who have appeared in numerous comedies and dramas, Krampus begins not unlike a darker version of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). However once the blizzard begins, the movie takes a distinctly eerie turn, bringing us something far stranger than simply having this dysfunctional family being stalked by a folkloric bad Santa slasher. Rather there is a series of uncanny and bizarre events enveloping the family, and before Krampus himself appears in all his glory, his various little helpers come to call first. Brought to life by the famed Weta Workshop, here we have some highly original and very memorable festive horrors, taking images and items from traditional Christmas iconography, and reflecting them through festive nightmares. It is an impressive imaginative and dark movie, steeped in the festive season but offering some very chilly terrors.
But while this movie is fairly uncompromisingly dark, quite clearly its take on the sinister side of Yuletide struck a chord, with the movie making over four times its budget back on its initial release, making it the most successful Christmas horror movie since A Nightmare Before Christmas back in 1993. And obviously it has continued to do great business every Yuletide since.
Now most Christmas horror movies have been smaller films, and while movies like Rare Exports got great reviews and didn’t necessarily perform poorly, they didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, or have the profile Krampus did. And I think it was the surprise success of Michael Dougerty’s festive horror that inspired a new wave of Christmas fright flicks.
Initially they were the low budget rip-offs and knock-offs with movies such as Krampus The Reckoning (2015), Krampus The Christmas Devil Returns (2016), Krampus Unleashed (2016), and Krampus Origins (2017) to name but a few. But less cynical film-makers realised that Christmas horror could be more than the sort of straight-to-video dreck we encountered behind Door 19. And more importantly, after the box office success of Krampus, studios, distributors and streaming platforms suddenly realised there was a bona fide market for Christmas horror movies. And hence since Krampus came to the big screen in 2015, every year since then we have had a fresh crop of seasonal shockers. In fact, in the years since we have had dozens of Christmas horror movies.
Now obviously not all of them have been great, and it’s not unfair to say that a great many terrible cheap movies have been released into the wild. But despite a slew of lazy Santa slashers and Krampus knock-offs, we are getting good new Christmas horrors coming out too, and often exploring brand new avenues for festive frights. For example, there’s I Trapped The Devil from 2019, a claustrophobic chiller in which a man and his wife make a Christmas visit to his estranged brother, and discover that his brother now believes that he has Satan himself confined in the basement. Or how about The Advent Calendar from 2021, an intriguing French-Belgian movie about an old wooden advent calendar whose sweet treats have magical powers… but each one comes with a price.
And coming right up to date, this year, 2024, we can round off this history of Christmas horror movies with a genuine milestone. Now in the main, Christmas horror movies are one-off affairs, and this festive subgenre has only really spawned one proper franchise, and that is of course Silent Night, Deadly Night. However, even then, each movie in that series has featured a different antagonist, and indeed there’s nothing really connecting the last three films, and even the remake, to the original story and characters. But this year we had a genuine first, a Christmas horror movie in a very successful franchise starring a genuine horror icon. Step forward and take a bow, Art the Clown and Terrifier 3.
Created by director Damien Leone, Art the Clown first appeared in a pair of low budget shorts, The Ninth Circle (2009) and Terrifier (2011). These were later packaged together with a third tale and a wraparound story to form the anthology All Hallows Eve in 2013. A few years later, Leone got the funds together to make a full length Terrifier movie, and stepping into the role of Art was David Howard Thornton, a gifted actor trained in physical comedy and mime. The movie got picked up by several film festivals and secured a limited theatrical release where its back-to-basics slasher action coupled with Thornton’s genuinely creepy performance and massively over-the-top gore gained the movie and Art the Clown a fan base.
Terrifier 2 came in 2022, and was bigger, better and bloodier. Here Art became a genuine icon, with Thornton getting to really spread his wings with a performance that was as hilarious as it was frightening, in a movie with a more developed story. Terrifier 2 built up an intriguing mythology around Art but also introduced his nemesis, a truly kick-ass final girl Sienna Shaw, played by Lauren LaVera. With a bigger release and a growing audience, fans were delighted to learn that there would be a third movie in which Art would come back for a second round with Sienna.
Now the first two movies, and the All Hallow’s Eve anthology obviously, were all set on Hallowe’en night, however Terrifier 3 is set at Christmas time. So we get Art the Clown creating his usual bloody mayhem in the festive season, and indeed, with a good many seasonal items. And he even dons a Santa suit for a good chunk of the movie. There’s guest appearances from Tom Savini and Jason Patric, but directly tying Terrifier 3 to Christmas horror movie history there is a very special cameo. In an early scene, Art spots an off-duty store Santa in a bar having a drink, and rushes in, and hilariously behaves like a small child meeting old St. Nick. However, also drinking with the store Santa, is another old fellow with a big fluffy white beard, and it is none other than Clint Howard, who was Ricky in Silent Night, Deadly Night Parts 4 and 5! Yes, dripping equally with blood and festive cheer, Terrifier 3 is a Christmas horror movie through and through.
But do be warned that the Terrifier films are massively gory, and I wouldn’t recommend watching Terrifier 3 while having your Christmas dinner! However despite the jaw dropping splat-tastic set pieces, Terrifier 3 was a box office smash - an incredible achievement for an unrated indie movie. And it has, of course, now appeared on streaming and returned to theatres for the Christmas season.
The Terrifier saga is highly unusual in horror history. To begin with it is extremely rare, in fact I think unprecedented, that a horror franchise of this kind has had the same creative force at the helm for every movie. And hence, this is also the only horror franchise, where the director has actually planned out a proper saga. Damien Leone sat down early on with David Howard Thornton and they worked out a story arc for the series, and so unlike other franchises where they are making it up as they go along, and every film only has slight connections to the preceding movies, with the Terrifier movies, each film builds on the last, and it does pay to watch them in order.
But most importantly in the context of Christmas horror history, this is the first time we have had a horror icon in a Yuletide fright flick. Yes, Art the Clown has succeeded where Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Frankenstein monster, King Kong, Godzilla, Norman Bates, Leatherface, Jason, Michael, Freddy, Deadites, Chucky, Leprechaun, Critters, Ghostface, Jigsaw, the Cenobites, Xenomorphs and Predators have all failed. And when you consider how long Christmas has been associated with spooky stories, it is quite incredible it has taken us so long to have a Christmas horror featuring one of the genre’s famous recurring characters.
All too often these days we tend to think that it has all been down before, but as our new best fiend Art the Clown has proved, there’s still fresh ground to be broken in the realm of Christmas horror. And given the incredible blockbusting success of Terrifier 3, you can be sure there will be a new wave of Christmas horror coming next year, bringing us more festive frights and seasonal shockers to make the season bright!
