Review by Sue Finn
Directed by: Troy Escamilla
Starring: Brinke Stevens, Helene Udy, Kaylee Williams, Ryan Poole, Alexandra Brents
It's Delta Sigma Sigma pledge week and three clearly ‘mean girls’ are putting a new pledge through her paces.
"Come on”," they say to poor half naked Angela (a convincing Mel Heflin) as she flinches away from them on the bathroom floor, "the others have already done this task."
The vulnerable girl puts her face down into the toilet bowl and sticks her tongue out.
The mean girls laugh.
But there’s one final task for Angela and though she begs "No, not that! Don’t make me," they succeed in making her sexually humiliate herself while they look on, their faces lit up with delight.
We cut to a party a few months later where gifts are being opened and the lead sorority mean girl Amber (who says Angela has been uppity since she pledged and needed to be taken down a few pegs) humiliates her again.
For what I suspect is not the first time, Angela cries herself to sleep that night.
Revenge is on her mind though and it seems the sorority has messed with the wrong troubled loner this time.
And so we have a brutal murder and a prolonged suicide all before the opening credits.
Merry Christmas indeed.
10 years after these events and Danielle (Hailey Strader), the sister of murder victim Amber, has joined the same sorority that her sister used to lead. It’s coming up to Christmas time, which she says to boyfriend Kyle (Billy Brannigan) will be a difficult time for her, but she is determined to honour Amber by staying in the sorority and indeed, in the sorority house.
Kyle is the brother of good girl Kayla, first seen here baking cookies for the coming party. The members of the sorority and various males are seen coming and going throughout the movie but few are given any real defining features that amount to more than stereotyping, so their names have a tendency to be forgotten. Still, this is a slasher movie and what a slasher needs more than anything is teenage fodder to cut down with various weaponry or more inventive items that are in keeping with the Christmas spirit - large candy cane in the throat anyone?
Mrs Claus, when she makes her first appearance to kill the inevitable ‘slut’, looks like she’s wearing a Grinch mask, and you cant help but wonder about her ability to stalk and in fact SEE with that contraption on.
Angela's mother (horror veteran Helene Udy) visits and asks after Danielle before berating her over her sister’s involvement in her daughter’s death.
A sorority sister goes missing and officer Cornell (the second horror veteran in the cast – Brinke Stevens) is asked to investigate, as the cop on the radio thinks witnesses at the sorority might want to talk with a woman.
Cornell says that's an example of the sexism she’s talked to him about - it's not actually.
And he replies, "Sure Doll" - THAT'S an example of sexism.
Cornell visits the house and warns them not to continue with their planned Christmas party when two girls have now gone missing; but of course the party (lame as it is), and the killings, are far from over.
Written and directed by Troy Escamilla, this is pretty standard stuff that we have all seen many times before; it's missing a sense of fun that would really take such tired material to the next level but a tongue-in-cheek approach is not used here and so it falls pretty flat.
Acting-wise, things are much better than expected with the cast believable as friends with a natural ease in their banter. They are fairly interchangeable characters but kudos for some diversity at the very least.
Strader as Danielle is particularly good, and in fact everyone did well in his or her roles; though the two veterans stood apart from the cast with an edge of hamminess to both performances.
The direction is a mixed bag with some dodgy shaky cam balanced out by some nicely framed shots.
The effects are surprisingly good but the kills are stretched out FOREVER (seriously, you could leave and make a cup of tea and when you return they will still be writhing around spurting blood), which only hurts the pacing and is tedious after the first blood bath kill.
There is an interesting twist at the end that I didn't see coming, followed by a coda that makes no sense.
A little naughty, a little nice, but overall not on my Christmas card list.
Mrs Claus is on DVD/VOD now.
