![a christmas horror s. a christmas horror s.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAyNDk2MjEyNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjM0OTY5NjE@._V1_.jpg)
Christmas movies of any kind, but particularly Christmas horror movies, can often succeed simply by not being boring. By the time the film actually does get around to new killer Santa shenanigans, you could have very easily just turned it off and started watching the first one all over again.
#A christmas horror s. movie#
That means there are a lot of flashbacks, and flashbacks mean a whole lot of footage from the first movie is simply reused.
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The story of Ricky Caldwell, younger brother of the original film's killer Santa Billy, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 spends a massive chunk of its runtime on Ricky recounting his family story to a psychiatrist. Its sequel is, sadly, a surprisingly dull exercise in retreading the first film and giving very little reason to celebrate the arrival of a new killer Santa. Silent Night, Deadly Night is a Christmas slasher camp classic with arguably the best poster the holiday horror subgenre has ever produced. By the end, when the truth about Santa Claus is revealed and the central characters have solved their problem, everything is wrapped up like the perfect Christmas gift, and for at least one Christmas Eve you'll be thinking about Santa very differently. It's a film that celebrates the aura of Christmas and the way it can command our lives and a film that shatters the illusions its characters have about how the holiday works. Perhaps the best thing about the film is the way it plays with various Christmas movie tropes - a struggling family, a boy searching for a reason to believe, mysterious and possibly supernatural happenings - and twists them into a story that's both scary and magical. Few films have ever succeeded in this pursuit as well as Rare Exports, a Finnish film that unfolds a fascinating, and truly creepy new take on Father Christmas slowly, like a present covered in elaborate bows. There are many, many Christmas movies devoted to exploring the mythology of Santa Claus, and each one hopes to add something to the legend, or at the very least to look at it through a new lens. The film is commendable for its effort to grow the mythology of the story and to truly take its murders over the top, but Black X-Mas is mostly a reminder that you could be watching a better version of this terrifying holiday tale. The result is a film that can't live up to its predecessor, and attempts to distinguish itself from the original film largely through increasingly disgusting murder sequences which culminate in the reveal of the killer. Styled as Black X-mas, the 2006 second incarnation of this story attempted to flesh out exactly who and what was committing the brutal Christmas murders at the sorority house, and while the answer to that mystery is satisfyingly bizarre, it does pull time away from the victims and their stories. We might just make it through another holiday season after all.Black Christmas is a film beloved by both horror movie and Christmas movie fans, and its plot is both very adaptable and conveniently relevant no matter what decade you choose to set the film in, so it shouldn't necessarily be a surprise that a remake ultimately arrived. The doppelgänger sequences nicely turn the screws of paranoia, and there’s something oddly fortifying about a bloody viking Saint Nick. The anthology is a mixed stocking if you reach inside, something’s likely to grab you.
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Veering from pole to pole makes the film’s overall timbre absolutely bananas, even when the scenes are buffered by framing material featuring William Shatner as a despondent holiday DJ. The tones of its four braided stories range from the grim tension of kids trapped at the site of a gory double murder to the silly splatter of Santa bashing away at foul-mouthed undead elves. Mixed in are an unnerving tale of a young boy replaced by an evil changeling and a panicked chase as a bickering family is pursued by the holiday devil Krampus, vividly imagined here punishing the naughty with a barbed whip. Yet the timing is the least of the terrors in A Christmas Horror Story, an anthology from directors Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, and Brett Sullivan. Want to hear something really scary? It’s the beginning of fall and I’ve already heard my first Christmas carol.